


Highway of Love (Or: How Sam Winchester Learned to Stop Worrying and Relax Already)

by Jassy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-16
Updated: 2011-03-16
Packaged: 2017-10-17 01:00:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jassy/pseuds/Jassy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Sam noticed a few things weren't quite right after they killed the Trickster.  After going back to check things out, his life will never be the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Highway of Love (Or: How Sam Winchester Learned to Stop Worrying and Relax Already)

Sam waved his brother and Bobby off, bowing out of the post hunt beer they wanted.  He pleaded a headache, but the look in Dean’s eyes suggested that he knew better.  Considering the way they’d been sniping at each other, it wasn’t unreasonable for Dean to assume that Sam wanted a little space – even if they’d made up. 

That was part of it, of course.  But mostly it was curiosity, and the nagging feeling that things weren’t quite what they’d appeared to be during the hunt.  As soon as the sound of the Impala had faded, Sam grabbed his jacket and left to hail a cab.

The campus was just as quiet as it had been when they’d fled earlier.  Of course, with two weird deaths and one guy making wild claims of alien abduction, few students were brave enough to be out and about.  Still, Sam kept quiet as he hurried inside the building.  There was no sense in taking risks.

Sam wasn’t entirely sure what he expected when he opened the door to the lecture hall.  Part of him thought that it would be completely empty.  Part of him thought the body would still be slumped in the seat, and the outrageous porn set bed would still be up front.  Instead, he found that the bed had been replaced by an enormous pile of cushions, all vivid reds and blues and purples.  The Trickster lounged in the middle of the pile, attended by two women who bore a disturbingly strong resemblance to Disney’s Jasmine.  The Trickster himself was decked out in some kind of loose, flowing silk robe. 

The Trickster looked up as he licked something from the fingers of the Jasmine on his left.  “Sam!  Well, this _is_ a surprise, I must say.  You didn’t strike me as the type to return to the scene of the crime.”

“Crime?”  Sam started to walk down the stairs, eyes straying from side to side in case the chainsaw wielding construct made a reappearance.  “What crime are you talking about?”

“Oh, come on now,” the Trickster chided.  “That whole ‘kill the Trickster’ thing you boys pulled earlier.  Let’s not play games, Sam.”

“I thought you liked games,” Sam replied.  “Besides, you’re obviously not dead.”

“True.  How did you figure it out?”  The Trickster nuzzled his face briefly into the neck of the Jasmine on his right, making her giggle. 

“When the chainsaw guy and the women vanished, the bed didn’t.  Plus, it was far too easy to kill you.  You could have filled the room with a dozen or more constructs.”  Sam shrugged as he came to a stop on the bottom step.  He didn’t really think that keeping a few feet of distance would give him any measure of safety.  He also didn’t want to get too close and get too good of a look at the debauched trio in front of him.

The Trickster laughed, sounding absolutely delighted.  “I _knew_ you were the smart one!” he chortled.  “I’ve been hunted before, you know, and not once has any of them caught on.  I’m impressed.”  He sat up, petting away the pouts the action prompted from the Jasmines.  “Still, that doesn’t tell me why you’re here,” he pointed out.

“Curiosity,” Sam admitted.  “The whole thing just nagged at me, and I had to see if I was right.”

“Tsk tsk, Sam.”  The Trickster shook his head sorrowfully.  “You know what they say – curiosity killed the cat.  Or, in this case, the cat killed curiosity.”  A loud and very intimidating growl started up behind Sam.  Belly clenching, Sam turned slowly to see an enormous tiger crouched on the stairs, tail lashing, and obviously about to pounce.

Sam nodded once and turned back to the Trickster.  “Really?  You just _had_ to corrupt a Disney movie, didn’t you?” he snapped indignantly.  “No wonder Dean kind of liked you – you both have the same juvenile, perverted sense of humor!”

Incredibly, the Trickster’s jaw actually dropped.  “There’s a tiger about to _eat_ you and you’re yelling at me?”

“What else should I be doing?  I have no weapons.  Even if it were a real tiger, there’s no way I could outrun it.  If you decide to have it slaughter me, there’s nothing I can do.  It would be pretty rude, though, I hope you know that.”

The Trickster rose to his feet and hopped lightly down off the stage.  Sam flinched as the action threatened to make the robe flap open.  He walked right up to Sam, head tilted to meet his eyes.  “You’re very different from other hunters,” he murmured.  “Not what I expected at all.”  He walked a slow circle around Sam, studying him from every angle.  It took everything that Sam had not to turn and watch him.  He could _feel_ the Trickster’s gaze as it swept over him, and it certainly wasn’t a comfortable sensation.  “So is your curiosity satisfied now that you know I’m still alive?”

“Not...really.  My curiosity is never satisfied.”

“Ooh, question and answer time!”  The Trickster jumped back up on the stage.  The moment his feet landed, the scene changed.  The cushions and Jasmines were gone, as was the silk robe.  Instead, a lectern appeared, along with a screen behind the Trickster.  The Trickster was dressed in a particularly awful tweed suit and a pair of clunky, black-rimmed glasses.  He tapped the microphone on the lectern, producing a feedback squeal.  “Is this thing on?  Testing, testing, one two three.”  Sam ducked his head to hide his unwilling smile.  “If everyone would please take their seats, the lecture is about to begin.”  Sam obligingly moved to sit, and a pad of paper and a pen appeared in his lap.  “We’ll begin with questions from the class.  Anyone?”  The Trickster gazed around and habit had Sam imitating him.  He found that every seat had been filled with the Trickster’s constructs, each one of them an amazingly attractive man or woman, and all of them dressed like Catholic school kids. 

Sending up a silent prayer that an orgy _not_ begin while he was still there, Sam raised his hand.  The Trickster pointed at him.  “Yes, ur, Professor?”  The Trickster grinned as though he were delighted that Sam was playing along.  “What’s your name?”

“I’ve got so many, which one would you like?”

“So does that mean that there aren’t actually multiple Tricksters in the world, just you using multiple faces and names?”

“Oh, there are other Tricksters in the world.  I just happen to be the best.”

“Professor, professor, I have a question!” a breathy female voice called out.  Sam subsided for a while as a number of constructs called out questions, many of them sexual, each of them with an answer extolling the Trickster’s awesomeness. 

Eventually the Trickster’s eyes wandered back to Sam and he obediently raised his hand again.  “Why did you kill those men?”

“Because they deserved it,” the Trickster said, a trifle impatiently.

“Yeah, I get that they were assholes,” Sam said carefully.  “What I meant was, why not go for something longer lasting, something that they could live with and really...appreciate?  Killing them just seems like it’s over and done with really quick.  Kind of difficult for them to learn any kind of lesson, or even acknowledge that they deserved it.  Unlike Curtis, who will never forget, and never treat anyone else like shit again.”

“So you think I should leave people mentally scarred for life instead of killing them?  I thought you were supposed to be one of the good guys, Sam.”  The tweed suit, lectern, and mock students all vanished.  The Trickster hopped down to the floor and moved to stand over Sam.  For all that he was much shorter than Sam, he managed to be incredibly intimidating.  “Listen kid, I’ve been around longer than you can imagine.  I’ve done the whole ‘delivering important life lessons’ gig.  And you know something about you humans?  You _don’t learn._ Turn a prince into a pauper for a year, and he’s back to walking on the backs of his servants within five.  Turn a pauper into a prince and it happens even quicker.  I’m over it.”

“Oh.”  Sam licked his lips.  He didn’t think that was really true, or the Trickster wouldn’t bother being picky about his victims.  And he wouldn’t have settled for leaving Curtis alive.  “Why did you stick around after we left?  I mostly expected to find the place empty, no body or anything.  I didn’t actually think you’d still be here.”

“And I expected Bobby to come poking his nose around.  He’s a hell of a lot smarter than you and your brother.”

“True,” Sam acknowledged.  “He’s out having a drink with Dean right now, and they both think you’re dead.”

“Are you going to enlighten them?”

Sam hesitated.  He hadn’t had much of a plan when he’d returned, just a simple need to satisfy his curiosity.  He _should_ tell them both that they’d missed the mark.  Keeping secrets never led anywhere good, and after the way that Sam had gotten pissed at Dean for keeping things from him, Dean would be well within his rights to be furious if he ever found that Sam had kept his mouth shut about this.  On the other hand, if he told them, it would mean continuing the hunt.  Dean would spend weeks, maybe months, obsessed with tracking and killing the Trickster, and Sam didn’t really think that they _could_.  The Trickster would never let them get close to his real body.  “I don’t know,” he admitted.  “I should, but...they would want to keep hunting you.  And I really don’t want to deal with Dean when he gets frustrated at not being able to find you.  He gets pissy.”

“Aw, you’re going to protect little ol’ me,” the Trickster simpered, fluttering his eyelashes.

“My sanity,” Sam corrected a little sharply.  “Just because I don’t think you’re exactly _evil_ doesn’t mean I think you deserve to get away with murdering people.  Assholes or not.  And I haven’t decided one way or the other yet.”

“Sure, kiddo.  Well then, since my life might be in jeopardy – _again_ – I’d say that’s my cue to leave.”  The Trickster turned away and Sam flung out a hand to stop him.

“Wait! Uh....”  The Trickster turned back, smirk curling his lips.  “You never did give me a name.  What is it?  Loki, Coyote?”

“Those are a couple.  Like I said, I’ve had a lot of names.  But you, Sam, you can call me...Gabe.”

“Gabe,” Sam repeated.  The Trickster – Gabe – just smirked a little harder, as though he knew just how incongruous the name was.  “Okay then, Gabe, what did you do with my laptop?” 

Gabe just laughed.  “I’ll see you around, Sam.”  He snapped his fingers and was gone.

Sam slowly got to his feet, looking around.  The room seemed far emptier than it should, which suggested that this time Gabe really was gone.  As he started to walk up the stairs, he carefully considered Gabe’s parting words.  The more he thought about them, the more dread filled him.  Somehow, he didn’t think it had been an idle threat.

~

A week and a couple thousand miles went by with no sign of Gabe anywhere, and Sam mostly relaxed and pushed the encounter to the back of his mind.  He hadn’t told Dean that the Trickster was still alive and, as he got caught up in the next hunt, he genuinely forgot about it for the most part.  That was until Dean left to get them food while Sam plugged away on his laptop (which had turned up in the Impala’s backseat, completely unharmed) and the hair on the back of his neck prickled.  Not one to ignore his instincts, Sam whirled around, one hand going to the gun tucked into the back of his jeans and saw Gabe lounging across his bed, eating a candy bar.  “Hiya, Sam.  Whatcha working on?”

“Gabe!  You – what – why!”  Sam clamped his jaw shut against his incoherent sputtering as Gabe laughed.

“So eloquent, I can see why you planned to be a lawyer,” Gabe mocked.

Sam took a deep breath and let it out slowly.  “Hello, Gabe.  May I ask why you’re here?”

“Curiosity, Sam.  What better reason could there be?”  Gabe took another bite from his candy bar, bits of chocolate and what looked like peanuts falling to the bedspread underneath him as he smiled innocently.

Sam bit back his instinctual sarcastic response to that, to the Trickster using his own excuse against him.  Somehow he didn’t doubt that if he dismissed it as a good enough reason that Gabe would get nasty, and Sam wouldn’t get out of _this_ encounter unscathed.  “Nothing wrong with a little healthy curiosity,” he said instead.  “So what are you curious about?”

“Just what I asked – what are you working on?  Sheesh, you humans have _really_ short memories.”  Gabe sat up and crossed his legs.  He finished his candy bar and a plate holding a cake positively dripping with frosting appeared in his lap. 

Sam watched him dig into it.  He didn’t have much of a sweet tooth but even he had to admit the cake looked good.  He shifted to the side to allow Gabe an unobstructed view of his laptop.  “There’s something in the lake killing people.  We’re fairly sure it’s not a spirit, but beyond that, we don’t have much of a clue.”

“And what makes you think that it’s not just a bunch of really bad swimmers?”

“No bodies have been found.  Not one out of a dozen people – men, women, a couple of kids – have turned up,” Sam said quietly.  “It’s a fresh water lake and there’s not supposed to be anything bigger than trout in it, so it’s not like it’s natural wildlife eating them.”  He glared at the screen, frustrated, forgetting for a moment the Trickster eating cake on his bed.

Gabe hummed around the fork in his mouth as he sucked frosting off of it.  “That’s not terribly interesting,” he commented when he was done molesting his eating utensil.  “Down right boring, in fact.  C’mon, you gotta have something fun going on!”

“Fun?  No, nothing fun is going on,” Sam bit out.  “People are dying, and maybe you don’t care so much, but **I** do.  Kids are dying, Gabe.  I won’t be in the mood for fun until whatever is killing people is dead.”

“Hmm.”  Gabe went back to eating his cake.  After a couple minutes of watching him eat, Sam cautiously decided that nothing too exciting was going to happen and went back to his research.  It was difficult to concentrate, though.  Every instinct he had was screaming at him to keep the Trickster in sight.  More, there was a niggling worm of impatience at the back of his mind, insistently pointing out every second of time passing, bringing Dean’s return closer. 

Gabe’s fork clattered against his plate and made Sam jump.  The smug little smile Gabe gave him said that he knew exactly what state Sam’s head was in.  “This really is incredibly boring, Sam.  How about I make you a deal?”

Instantly wary, Sam shook his head.  “I don’t think so, Gabe.  You’re not a demon, but still.  Traditionally, making deals with _anything_ , even demi-gods, never ends well.  At least not for the human.”

“You haven’t even heard it yet!  It’s a really good deal, Sam,” Gabe pouted.  “You could at least hear me out.”

Sam hesitated, then nodded.  “Okay, I’ll listen.  But listening doesn’t constitute agreement.”

“Of course not.  The deal is this: I’ll give you the information on what’s in the lake.  What it is and how to kill it.  In return, you spend one day with me having fun.  That’s not such a bad deal, right?”

“It sounds too good to be true.  Which, traditionally speaking, means that it is,” Sam replied dryly.  Gabe only grinned at him.  “Let’s clarify things a bit.  What do you mean by fun, and what do you mean by a day?  A day as in sunrise to sunset, or a day as in twenty-four hours?”

“Twenty-four hours and fun as in fun!  Even you have to know what fun is, Sam!”

“I know what my idea of fun is, and after seeing your idea of fun, I’m not sure I want to agree to it,” Sam shot back.  “I’m not killing or psychologically scarring anyone with you.”

“That wasn’t fun,” Gabe scoffed.  “That was work.  Just because I enjoy my work doesn’t mean I can’t have fun too.  So what do you say?”

“What happens when the twenty-four hours is over?” Sam asked, still suspicious but really, really tempted.  Neither he nor Dean had any clue what was killing people.  And with typical human stubbornness, no one was avoiding the lake.  The general consensus seemed to be that it was a rash of bad luck that couldn’t happen to _them_ , which meant that more people would die.

Gabe rolled his eyes.  “I’m not one of the fey, Sam.  We won’t be going under the hill, and I’ll return you here.  You’ll be a grand total of twenty-four hours older than you were when you left.  I can even return you mere seconds after I’ve taken you so that your brother never has to know you were gone.  It’s just fun, Sam.  You have my word on that.”

“One last question.  Why?”

“Because I find you – interesting.”

Sam hesitated, thinking it over.  He didn’t trust the Trickster, not even a little bit.  But somehow, in this case, he believed him.  “Alright,” he heard himself say.  “I agree.  You provide the information on the creature killing people in the lake – what it is, and how to kill it, leaving _nothing_ out – and I agree to spend twenty-four hours having non-lethal fun with you.”

Gabe’s smile was sharp, with plenty of teeth.  “Excellent.”  He snapped his fingers and was gone.

For a moment, Sam just stared at the place where the Trickster had sat.  There wasn’t even a dent in the covers to show that he’d been there.  Of course, he realized after a few moments, he hadn’t specified when the information had to be provided.  Gabe could give him the information after he and Dean had already figured things out themselves, regardless of how long it took, and Sam would still be bound by the deal.  Cursing himself, Sam turned back to his computer to keep looking, then paused.  There was a new website displayed, showing a picture of a strange, vaguely humanoid creature.

            _UNDINES_

 _The undine, sometimes called a mermaid, is an elemental creature that lives in water.  Mythology claims that these creatures live only in the sea, which is incorrect.  They can live in both fresh and salt water, with the only difference between the two types being coloration.  Mature undine can reach lengths of up to six feet.  They can lay up to two dozen eggs, which take approximately six months to hatch.  Unlike the eggs of other creatures, there is nothing within the soft ‘shell’ surrounding the infant undine to feed it.  Instead the parent will provide fresh meat, laying a fresh kill on top of the pile of eggs.  The shell membrane is acidic and porous.  The acid coating the membrane dissolves both flesh and bone, while the membrane allows the nutrients to reach the infant._

 _Once hatched, an infant undine’s body has a consistency and appearance similar to jellyfish, being translucent and boneless.  The parent undine loses interest in its young once they are hatched.  The young continue to feed in a similar fashion as when they were in the shell, by finding and wrapping themselves around whatever meat source they can catch.  A light coating of the acid remains on their delicate skin which rapidly dissolves through flesh and bone.  It will continue to feed in this fashion until it reaches its full growth, which takes approximately one year.  Upon reaching maturity, the body loses its jelly-like state to become solid, developing full skeletal and muscular systems...._  
     
Dean returned just as Sam finished reading the article.  “Hey, Sam, got you a – what is it?”

Sam opened his mouth to tell Dean about the Trickster, already mentally bracing himself for the well deserved tongue lashing he would get.  “I think I figured out what’s been killing people,” his mouth said instead.  _Gabe, you bastard!_ he snarled mentally.  He was very sure that wasn’t what he’d meant to say, which could only mean that the Trickster had put some kind of compulsion on him.  He would deal with that later, though. 

Dean dropped the bags of food and bent over to read what was on the screen.  When he was done, he straightened with a whistle.  “Boy, Disney sure got that one wrong.  That is not a hot chick wearing nothing but a pair of seashells.”

Rolling his eyes, Sam snagged a pad of paper and a pen.  “No kidding.  We’re going to need scuba tanks and a couple of spears,” he muttered, mostly to himself, as he wrote out what they’d need.  If the article was correct, there was a freshwater undine who had laid eggs and needed plenty of fresh meat to feed them.  The drownings had only been happening the last two months, which meant, Sam hoped, that the eggs hadn’t hatched yet.  If that was the case, then all they had to do was find the nest and cut open all the eggs.  An attack on the nest should bring the parent as well, saving them the need to try to search the entire lake for it.

The hunt went well.  A little research gave them the general area where the people had gone missing, which gave them a fair starting area for their search.  Combined with the information that Gabe had given him (Sam couldn’t decided if it was fortunately or _unfortunately_ accurate) they had been able to dive down and find the nest.  While they’d been in the middle of destroying the eggs, the parent had shown up.  It had gotten a little dicey, and Dean had ended up losing his spear and having to wrestle with the thing while Sam finished smashing the eggs into a disgusting pulp.  The moment he’d been sure he’d gotten the last one, he’d swum up beneath the struggling pair and put the business end of the spear through the undine’s chest.  Just to be certain it was dead and not simply injured, Dean had dragged it back to land and torched it.

Back at the motel, Sam had claimed first shower by the simple expedient of being the first one in the room.  He took his time scrubbing the lake water out of his hair and didn’t get out until he figured Dean was ready to pound on the door.  He opened the door on a cloud of steam and was greeted by his brother’s glare.  “Finally!  There better still be enough hot water left, dude.  I smell like dead fish.”

Sam pointedly sniffed the air.  “Yeah.  You really do.”

“Shut up.”  Dean shoulder-checked him as he brushed by, intent on getting clean.

Sam grinned to himself as he pulled on a clean pair of boxers.  They didn’t often have hunts that went so well and that left them both still in good health.  He lost the grin when the hair on the back of his neck stood up.  He turned and found Gabe leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest.  “Now?  Dean just got in the shower and he won’t be in there _that_ long,” Sam hissed.

“I told you, I can return you to this time so he’ll never know.  So go on, get dressed so we can go.”  Gabe paused for a moment to rake his gaze over Sam from head to toe.  “Or you can stay like that – I won’t mind.”

Sam snatched up a shirt and yanked it over his head.  “Y’know, I don’t appreciate the compulsion or block or whatever that you put on me,” he said as he picked up the rest of his clothes to finish dressing.  “I’ve tried to tell Dean about you several times and somehow, the words just won’t come.”

“You said it yourself, he gets pissy.  I did it for your own good.  Ready?” Gabe asked as Sam finished tying his shoes.  Sam glanced towards the duffel on the table that contained several of their weapons then resolutely turned his back on it.  They wouldn’t do him any good.  Besides, he had the strangest feeling that he really wouldn’t need them.  He nodded and Gabe held out a hand.  Sam gingerly took it, slightly disturbed by the gleeful smile that lit the Trickster’s face.  Sam had a moment to feel a bolt of alarm shoot through him before they were suddenly...elsewhere.  “Let the fun begin!” Gabe said cheerfully.

Sam let go of his hand and turned in a slow circle, taking in their surroundings.  Carnival rides clattered and clanged nearby, filling the air with tinny music and joyful shrieks.  The air was scented with the smells of hot dogs and cotton candy and the slightly fainter smell of animals.  He raised an eyebrow at Gabe.  “A county fair?”

“Yup.  Let’s go.”  Gabe threaded his way through the crowd, unerringly heading for a cotton candy vender.  He purchased – with what looked like real money – two giant cones of the spun sugar and pressed one into Sam’s hands.  Sam eyed the pink stuff for a moment.  Then, with a mental shrug, he pinched off a large portion and shoved it in his mouth.  A deal was a deal, and if the worst thing to come out of his end of the bargain was an upset stomach, so be it.

They walked down the midway, pausing every few feet to check out a game or attraction.  Sam found himself drawn to a pair of games situated side by side.  Traditionally, the games in question had always drawn snorts of disgust from John Winchester, and he wouldn’t let them play.  All midway games were rigged to a certain extent to make sure that few people could win any of the bigger prizes.  But the bottle break and dart toss were, in John’s mind, the worst.  The pellet guns always had their sights messed up so that even someone with some experience wouldn’t be able to aim correctly.  And the balloons in the dart toss were never more than half filled, ensuring that the extremely dull darts would be more likely to bounce off than pop one.  When he and Dean had gotten older, Dean had taken to filing the points of the darts to needle sharpness. 

As Sam and Gabe watched, a man somewhere in his early thirties tried his hand at the darts under the eager gaze of his daughter, who was all of six years old.  He managed to pop two balloons, which earned him a clunky plastic ring rather than the giant purple unicorn his daughter pointed at.  Sam chewed his lip, watching the little girl try to be happy over the ring, then leaned down.  “Since I seem to have found myself without so much as a pocket knife, would you mind sharpening the darts for me?” he asked.

“Aw, are you going to win me the pink panda?” Gabe asked brightly. 

Sam blinked at him.  “If you’d like.”  Gabe grinned and snapped his fingers.  Sam walked up and handed the carnie enough money for two plays.  The darts he received were sharp enough to count as deadly weapons.  He hefted them, noting how the balance was off, which would further hinder most people.  Sam wasn’t most people, however, and had been deft at hustling darts with whatever crappy pieces of plastic bars had on hand for years. 

He threw all five in rapid succession, filling the air with a series of pops as balloons died.  He drew spontaneous applause from the few people watching and pointed at the purple unicorn.  The carnie eyed the darts suspiciously when he pulled them out of the board and tried to switch them out.  It didn’t do him much good, since all of the darts that he had were equally sharp, and in short order, the pink panda joined the unicorn in front of him.  Sam handed the panda to Gabe with a little flourish, then chased down the father and little girl.  The girl squealed and hugged the cheap thing while the father attempted to pay Sam back the price of the throw.  Sam waved him off and jogged back to Gabe’s side.

“Can’t do anything without playing the white knight, can you, kid?”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re here to have fun and you’re still trying to right wrongs.”

Sam took a chance and put an arm around Gabe’s shoulders.  He turned the demi-god to face the little girl and her father.  “Take a good look at her, Gabe.  She’s naming the thing, and probably already making up all kinds of wild stories.  How is that not fun?”

Gabe rolled his eyes.  “You’re too wholesome for your own good, Winchester.”

“Got you your panda, didn’t I?  Which I am _not_ carrying around, by the way.”

“Like I’d want you to carry Snuffles anyway,” Gabe sniffed.  He jerked his head.  “Funnel cake!”

Sam watched him go.  “Snuffles?  Snuffles the pink panda.”  Rolling his eyes, he followed the Trickster, but refused the funnel cake offered to him since he was still working on his cotton candy.  From there they headed towards the rides, and Gabe insisted that they ride every single one of them.  Sam suffered through the roller coaster with a white knuckled grip on the safety bar, sure that at any moment the car would fly off the rails.  The rest of the rides weren’t bad – he actually enjoyed the Tilt-a-Whirl once he got the car spinning in the right direction so that he had the Trickster squished up against the side.  The bumper cars made him cranky, since he barely fit into one, and his knees felt like they were jammed up around his ears.  Gabe laughed at him before they even got started, so Sam made it his mission to crash into him every chance he got.  Each time his car connected with Gabe’s, the Trickster was jerked in his seat in a very satisfying manner.  He had bruises on his shins from where they’d been pressed against the rim of the car, but he felt they were worth it.

The day passed with Sam hardly noticing.  The setting of the sun caught him by surprise, and for the first time he found himself checking his watch and wondering how long they’d been there and how long it would be before he was returned to his brother in their motel room.  Then Gabe tried to drag him into the fun house and he forgot to ask as he somewhat urgently talked his way out of it.  Sam’s issues with clowns certainly seemed to amuse Gabe, but after pointing out that he knew for a fact that clowns sometimes really and truly killed, Gabe let them bypass that ‘attraction’.

The rest of the twenty-four hours passed in something of a blur as Sam’s energy began to wane.  They had been running around all day in an attempt to find, discreetly, what they would need to kill the undine and its nest, and then they had spent a good portion of the night under water actually taking care of it.  But as tired as he was, Sam had to admit that he had fun.  Not just at the fair, but later as well.  Gabe took him to the best steakhouse he’d ever set foot in for real food.  Once Sam had gorged himself, Gabe had whisked him off to a party of some kind for people he’d never heard of but who nonetheless didn’t seem to mind the pair of them crashing.  It came as something of a shock when Gabe laid a hand on his arm and murmured, “Time to go home, Sam,” in his ear.

Sam blinked once and was standing once again in his and Dean’s motel room.  The shower was still running and nothing had been moved.  But his face felt tender, like he had a mild sunburn, and he felt vaguely grubby as well – just exactly as he would if he’d spent the day wandering a fair followed by dancing all night at a crowded party.  Sam shook himself, slightly disoriented as Gabe dropped his hand and stepped back.  He cocked his head at him, a hint of a smirk hovering at the corners of his mouth, and Sam gave him the smile he was due.  “I had fun,” he admitted.  “Thank you.”

For a fleeting instant, surprise seemed to flash across the Trickster’s face before it was replaced with a smug look.  “You say that like you weren’t expecting to.”

“Let’s just say I was a little skeptical on how well our ideas of fun would mesh.”

“Hmm.  Time for me to go.  I’ll see you later, Sam,” Gabe promised.  He snapped his fingers and was gone.

Sam stripped down to his boxers and crawled underneath the covers.  He needed another shower and he needed to brush his teeth, but Dean would wonder what was up if he did either.  Sam had no doubt that the block against telling Dean about Gabe was still in effect, so until it was lifted, he was better off not acting in any way that Dean would see as out of the ordinary.  Plus, he was just too tired to bother, and ended up falling asleep before Dean was out of the bathroom.

Gabe made good on his threat (promise? Sam wasn’t sure which) to see him again.  It was very, very strange for Sam.  About once a week he would turn around to find the Trickster leaning against a wall or lounging on the bed or, on one memorable occasion, perched on a closed toilet lid after Sam had finished using the urinal.  Sometimes he’d take Sam away, regardless of his protests, to have dinner with him, or go dancing, or play miniature golf.  Other times he’d stay just long enough to find out what Sam was doing before apparently getting bored and vanishing again.  It never happened during a hunt, which Sam was grateful for.  It was distracting enough as it was, knowing that at some point after the hunt was over he would get another visit.  If he’d had to anticipate a visit _during_ a hunt, he’d have been useless.  As it was, he found himself _looking forward_ to the visits, which was disturbing all by itself.

Dean got wind of a werewolf hunt and got ridiculously excited.  Sam did his brotherly duty and mocked him for it, but he couldn’t help a slight surge of his own excitement.  The more unique the hunt, or the more dangerous it was, the more creative Gabe got with the places he took him to.  Werewolves were very rare, and very dangerous to hunt, so there was no telling where Gabe would choose to take him when it was over.

~

“Hiya, kiddo!” Gabe chirped as he appeared beside Sam’s bed.  “Are you sick?  You look like shit.”

Sam cracked an eye and took in the sight of the Trickster dressed in board shorts and the loudest Hawaiian shirt Sam had ever seen.  He covered his face with his arm.  “I really don’t feel like going anywhere right now, Gabe.  I’m not going to be a whole lot of fun for a while.”

“Ah.”  The bed shifted as Gabe sat beside him.  “The werewolf hunt didn’t go well.”

Sam laughed bitterly.  “Oh, it went great.  Fantastic.  Bagged _two_ werewolves, actually.  Hoo-fucking-ray.”  He could remember all too easily how he’d anticipated Gabe’s post-hunt arrival and it made him sick.  He hadn’t let himself think about how, when killing a werewolf, you also killed the _human_.  The monster was only there for a few hours, three nights out of twenty-eight, and the rest of the time it was a person who hadn’t asked to be a monster, who didn’t want to tear out and eat the hearts of other humans, who was probably afraid of the things they suspected they did but couldn’t ever remember.

“Werewolves _are_ evil, Sam,” Gabe said quietly.  Sam jerked, ready to hit him, and Gabe caught his arm before his fist could connect.  “No, listen to me.  I know what kind of information is out there, and it’s incomplete and inaccurate.  So let me tell you about werewolves.  It’s a curse, and I don’t mean that metaphorically.  A very, very long time ago, back when the Great Pyramid didn’t exist yet, a woman, a witch, became epically pissed at someone in her village.  She cast a spell that turned the man into a ravening beast for the three days of the full moon.  But, like most people, she never read the fine print.  She didn’t know that the curse was contagious.  She just knew that the rest of the village would find out and drive the man out or kill him.  They couldn’t kill him, because werewolves can only be killed by silver.  So they drove them out, and he spent his days traveling.  And for three nights of the month, the beast hunted.  And it liked to hunt humans the best, so it always headed for the nearest settlement.  The beast didn’t always manage to kill, and the curse spread.  The thing is, the man knew damn well who had cursed him, and started to really hate women.  That hate bled into the beast, so its favorite targets became women.  The longer he lived, the more the beast influenced his human mind and vice versa.  By the time he was killed, he was equal parts man and beast.” 

Gabe finally let go of Sam’s arm.  “There is no cure for it.  Men have tried to sell their souls to wipe out lycanthropy and no demon has ever taken the deal.  And if you’d let her live, Madison would have lost herself, Sam.  Over time, she would have become a werewolf 24/7, filled with hate and bloodlust and with the ability to _think_.  And whatever was left of her soul would have been stuck inside of her until she was killed, because werewolves don’t age, and they don’t get sick.  You really did save her the only way you could.”

Sam felt his hands curl into fists and rolled onto his side, putting his back to the Trickster.  “She didn’t deserve it,” he got out.  “She was a good person.  Smart and funny and caring, and she didn’t deserve to have this happen to her.”

“She was as much a victim as the people she killed.  And you saved her, Sam.  She died clean, and she died with someone there who cared about her.  Try to remember that.”  Gabe touched his shoulder lightly.  “Get some sleep, Sam.  You need the rest.”

Sam tried to tell him that he couldn’t sleep yet.  The memories were too fresh, of how vibrant she’d been in his arms, how hot her blood had been as it seeped into his jeans while the life drained out of her.  It had been a clean shot to the heart, but it still took a few seconds for the brain to catch on that it was dead.  But the words were more than a suggestion, it seemed, since he found his eyes unable to open.  He never felt Gabe leave the bed and never heard Dean return from his pointless food run.  When he woke up the next morning, however, the pain was a little less sharp and his mind was clearer.  His thoughts no longer went in pointless circles of ifs and maybes.  Madison had been doomed before he’d even met her. 

Dean decided that they needed a vacation and packed them off to Hollywood.  Perspective or not, Sam wasn’t in the mood for a vacation.  He wanted to work.  The only real saving grace in their lives was saving people and he needed that.  Needed to save _someone_ in a way that left him feeling good about it.  The hunt that they found, though, didn’t quite fit the bill.  It was just so _stupid_.  They had saved the guy’s life, but the fact that it was in danger over an altered script was childish – an overgrown boy pitching one hell of a tantrum because things didn’t go his way.  Still, nothing had gone seriously wrong, which helped.

Dean seemed to realize that he was feeling better, finally, and reluctantly left Sam alone at their motel while he went out to find a pool game or two to replenish their cash.  Almost as soon as the door closed Gabe appeared.  When he did, he was dressed like a cowboy, complete with chaps, spurs on his boots, and an enormous ten gallon hat.  “Ah, Hollywood.  They don’t make Westerns like they used to.”

Sam couldn’t help but laugh as he rolled off the bed.  “I can’t believe you.  You look....”

Gabe lifted his chin, preening.  “Devastatingly handsome?  Rugged and manly?”

Sam snatched the hat off his head.  “Like you’re overcompensating.”

“Taking a man’s hat is a shootin’ offense, partner,” Gabe warned him in an awful Southern accent.  “You city slickers might not know it, so’s if you give it back and apologize, we’ll let it go this once.”

Instead, Sam plopped the hat on his own head.  “Nah.  Gotta be a real man to pull off a hat like this.”

“Hey!  That’s twice now you’ve insulted my masculinity.  What gives?” Gabe demanded indignantly.

“Just teasing.”  Smiling, Sam put the hat back on Gabe’s head.  He bent down and rummaged in his duffel until he found what he wanted, then presented the bag of mixed mini candy bars.  “Here.  I wasn’t sure what your favorite kind was, but since you seem to like them all I figured you’d like this.”

Gabe accepted the bag with a bemused smile.  “What’s this for?”

“To say thank you.  For what you told me before, and for helping me sleep without dreaming.”  Sam shrugged a little.  “You’re actually pretty hard to shop for, you know.  What do you get the god who can make anything?”

“This works.”  Gabe tore the bag open and flopped on Sam’s bed to start eating.  Sam sucked in a breath and started choking on spit.  Gabe looked coyly over his shoulder, one of the candy bars caught between his lips.

“You – what – Gabe!  You’re not wearing any _pants!_ ” Sam finally managed to get out.

“It would be a crime against humanity to cover this ass up when it’s framed so attractively.”

Cheeks hot, Sam looked anywhere in the room besides at the demi-god on his bed.  Eventually he heard a chuckle, followed by the creaking of the bedsprings and risked a peek.  Gabe had rolled over onto his back.  Still leery, Sam sat himself down in a chair and studiously did _not_ think about the fact that Gabe’s naked rear was pressed against the blankets of his bed. 

“So, Samkins, where would you like to go today?” Gabe asked once he’d gone through about half the bag of candy.

Sam blinked at him in surprise.  “I get to pick?”

“I get full veto if you pick somewhere lame,” Gabe warned. 

“Okay, um.”  Sam considered carefully.  “Well, I got the impression you were going to take me to the beach the last time.  I wouldn’t say no to that.  Someplace tropical,” he suggested.  The type of place he would never get to see on his own, he didn’t add.

“Tropical beach it is!”  Gabe held out a chocolate coated hand.  Sam stretched his arm out to touch his fingers to Gabe’s palm.  Then the smell of salt was in his nose and the sun was shining down on him through hot, humid air.  Gabe was back in the Hawaiian shirt and shorts, although he’d brought his candy with him.  Sam turned in a slow circle.

The sand beneath his feet stretched out to either side, white beneath the sun.  The water that rolled continuously against the shore was the deep, cobalt blue that he’d only ever seen in pictures and documentaries.  Behind them, palm trees towered above thick foliage dotted by huge, brightly colored flowers.  Birds and what sounded like some kind of monkey called from within them.

“Is this – does anyone live on this island?” he asked, a bit of awe tinging his voice.

“Nope.  It’s not big enough, really, although cruise ships do stop occasionally to let tourists visit.  And scientists sometimes come here to study the ‘closed ecology’.  We’ve got it to ourselves for however long we want.”  Sam turned a blinding smile on him to find that Gabe had created a beach chair and a large umbrella.

“No wonder you’re so pasty.  The sun won’t kill you, you know.”

“I’m not the one that’s fully dressed.”

Shrugging, Sam kicked off his shoes and peeled his socks and t-shirt off.  He paused with his fingers on the button of his jeans.  “Um, could I get some swim trunks please?”  He yelped a moment later when the feeling of soft denim on his legs was replaced by – “Not a Speedo!  Damn it, Gabe, trunks!  Like yours!”  Embarrassed, he cupped his hands in front of himself until a laughing Gabe snapped his fingers and altered the Speedo into proper swim trunks.  “Thank you.”  He ignored the fact that the trunks were fluorescent pink and headed towards the water.  When the waves were washing over his feet he paused and turned back.  “Are there jellyfish or any other deadly creatures that I need to worry about?”

“You don’t have to worry about anything, Sam-a-lam.  You’re safe.”

“Awesome.”  With that, Sam waded out into the water and then dove as soon as it was deep enough.  He couldn’t believe how warm and clear the water was.  He could see straight down to the ocean floor like he was looking through glass.  And the water in between was just teeming with life.

“Want a closer look?” Gabe asked, lips almost brushing his ear.  Sam flailed briefly and nearly went under until Gabe caught his arm and held him steady in the water until he recovered.  “We could go under.”

“Uh, Gabe?  I can’t breathe under water.  Maybe you can, but gills don’t come standard with humans.”

Gabe laughed.  “Oh, Samich, when will you learn?  When you’re with me, you can do anything.”  With that, Gabe dove beneath the surface and pulled Sam down with him.  Sam panicked, of course.  Gabe’s hold on his arm was inhumanly strong.  Then Gabe’s laughter carried, crystal clear, through the water.  Sam stopped struggling only with a massive effort of will and glared at him.  His lungs were burning – he’d be forced to breathe soon.  “Just breathe, Sam.  Trust me, it’ll be fine.”  Gabe held his eyes with an unusually solemn look.  Sam opened his mouth and took a breath before he could really think better of it.  Air rushed into his lungs, cool and sweet.  Gabe shifted his hand from Sam’s elbow to lace their fingers together.  “Don’t let go or you’ll be sucking water instead of air,” he instructed.

“I don’t actually have gills, do I?” Sam asked, startled that his voice worked.  Somehow, he hadn’t expected it to, even though he was breathing underwater. 

“No, you don’t actually have gills.”  Gabe rolled his eyes.  “I’m just filtering the water out when you breathe.  It’s easier.”  He tugged at Sam’s hand then, to lead him deeper into the water. 

Sam didn’t know the names of any of the fish that populated the water.  For once, he didn’t care about not knowing.  The fish were all colors of the rainbow, bright and vivid, and Gabe had to be doing _something_ because they could swim right in the middle of a school and, other than avoiding a collision, the fish didn’t care.  They swam for hours, until a change in the light filtering down through the water made Sam look up and realize that the sun was setting.  Hot on the heels of that was the realization that he was hungry and thirsty and his arms and legs felt a lot like lead. 

They returned to the beach and Sam collapsed to the sand the moment there was no longer water to hold him up.  He forgot to let go of Gabe’s hand, though, and dragged the Trickster down with him.  “Oof, sorry!” 

Gabe rolled to the side, laughing at him.  “Tired already, Winchester?”

“Yeah, sorry, not all of us have phenomenal cosmic powers.”  Sam stretched out, arching his spine as he extended his arms and legs.  “That was amazing, by the way,” he said, staring up at the rapidly darkening sky.  “I never could have imagined something like that.”

“You’re welcome.  Now c’mon before your stomach eats through your spine.”  Gabe stood up and hauled Sam to his feet.  He followed him further up the beach to where Gabe had left his umbrella and chair.  Between one blink and the next, the chair and umbrella vanished.  They were replaced with a roaring bonfire and a large blanket.  Sam dropped down cross-legged and a huge platter appeared between himself and Gabe.  It was filled with hotdogs, buns, various condiments, and all the fixings for s’mores.  After a moment Gabe handed him a long, thin straight stick, end perfectly sharpened to spear either hotdog or marshmallow for roasting. 

Sam eagerly speared a couple hotdogs and thrust the stick into the fire.  As impatient as he was, he still carefully rotated the stick to achieve the perfect all over toast.  Gabe, he noticed as he assembled the dogs on the buns, waited until his flamed before pulling them out and blowing the flames out.  “Weird,” Sam commented.

“What’s weird?”

“Your eating habits.  As much as you love sweets, I wouldn’t have thought you would like eating charcoal.”

“Heathen,” Gabe sniffed.  “This is the only right and proper way of eating hotdogs.  All other ways are just blasphemy.”

“Mmm, yummy blasphemy.”  Sam opened his mouth wide and shoved an entire hotdog in his mouth, bun and all.  It was a trick that somehow never failed to impress his brother, but always resulted in a couple weeks of being pestered to join an eating contest.  Gabe, however, just laughed.  Sam made his way through a total of four hotdogs (the last three of which he ate like a normal person) before his stomach was satisfied.  Gabe handed him a glass of soda to wash them down with and Sam blinked when the cherry flavored fizz hit his tongue.  “How’d you know I like cherry?” 

Gabe gave him a ‘duh’ look.  “Hello, god here?  Besides, it’s what you got at the carnival.”

“Oh.  Right.”  He reached for the s’mores ingredients.  “Please tell me you don’t char your marshmallows too.”

“Of course not!  They should be toasted a nice, even golden brown.  Like this.”  Gabe thrust his stick into the flames and Sam could see right off that he was going to have issues.  He hadn’t paid attention when he’d put the marshmallow on and he’d stabbed it through off center.  As it heated and the center turned to liquid, it melted right off the stick and fell into the flames.

Sam twirled his own, more carefully laden stick, ensuring an even toasting.  “Well.  I bow to your superior toasting abilities.”

“I can turn you into a frog, you know,” Gabe threatened.  “And there are precious few princesses around these parts to change you back.”

Laughing, Sam pulled his stick out of the fire and presented his perfectly toasted marshmallow to Gabe.  “Here.  I’m pretty sure if you go too much longer without sweets you’ll implode.”

Gabe swiftly pulled the sticky mass off and sandwiched it with the chocolate.  He shoved the whole thing into his mouth, apparently not noticing how hot it still was.  “Mmm, well done.  Carry on.”  He passed his stick to Sam with an imperious gesture indicating that Sam should toast for them both.  Amused, Sam complied.

When the last graham cracker crumb was gone, Sam tossed the sticks onto the fire and laid back, hands pillowing his head.  The stars blazed in the sky in unfamiliar patterns.  “I don’t recognize a single constellation,” he realized.

Gabe flopped backwards beside him.  “Want me to tell you?” he offered.

“Nah.  It’ll give me something to look into between cases.  See how long it takes me to figure out approximately where you brought me.”  He smiled up at the sky.  “Should have built a sand castle.”

“We can do that tomorrow.”  Pleased at the prospect of spending at least one more day in paradise, Sam rolled to his side to face Gabe.  Gabe turned his head, eyebrow raised in question.  The impulse hit out of nowhere, and Sam went with it before he had a chance to think about it.  He leaned up and over and brushed his lips against ones that always seemed to have at least a hint of a smirk hovering at their edges.  Gabe pushed him back before he could do it again, face closed off and blank.  “I think it’s time for you to go home, Sam.”  Sam opened his mouth to protest, to apologize, but he never got the chance.  He was back in his and Dean’s motel room, laying on his bed, dressed in his own clothes again. 

Acting on autopilot, Sam got up from the bed to shower the salt from his skin and hair.  He laid back down with his hair still wet and waited, but Gabe didn’t come back.  Dean returned, flush with cash, and seemed to assume that Sam was sleeping since he changed for bed quietly.  Dean fell asleep soon after and Gabe still didn’t come back.  Sam fell asleep eventually, only to jolt awake a few hours later from a nightmare.

They left the next day and headed northeast.  Dean found a hunt.  It was a simple salt and burn, very straightforward, but Sam was so distracted that he managed to get himself thrown through a plate glass window.  He needed over twenty stitches to close the gash in his upper back.  Gabe still didn’t come when the hunt was over.  Nor when they finished the next hunt.  When he didn’t come after the third, Sam had to accept that he just wasn’t going to.  Sam had ruined it.

He could tell that Dean was worried about him.  The nightmares that Gabe had to have been holding off for him didn’t ease up once they returned, so Sam wasn’t getting much sleep.  He wasn’t really hungry either, he only ate when Dean put food in front of him, and at that, he never could finish it.  But when Dean asked, Sam didn’t even try to tell him the truth.  After all, how was he supposed to explain it?  Explain that he’d made friends with the Trickster who, oh yeah, wasn’t really dead, and then he’d been stupid enough to fall for him?  And now he was nursing a broken heart?

It wouldn’t go over well and Sam couldn’t take Dean being angry with him on top of everything, so Sam just mumbled something about the nightmares and Madison and what Dad had told Dean – all of which contributed, so he wasn’t out and out lying – and tried to pull himself together.

Three months passed agonizingly slowly.  He missed Gabe every second with an intensity that shocked him.  Then he was thrown from sleep one night by a nightmare and opened his eyes to see Gabe staring down at him, eyes blazing burnished gold in the darkness.  “Gabe!”  Relief and joy swamped him, stunned him, so all he could do was stare.

“You!” Gabe hissed, sounding anything but happy.  “What _is_ it with you?  You’re nothing – just a screwed up human in a world full of them.  So why can’t I get you out of my head?”  Gabe didn’t allow him time to even begin thinking of a response.  He wrapped a hand in Sam’s shirt and lifted him to his knees on the bed.  Face to face, he whispered, “What have you _done_ to me?” before he slammed his mouth over Sam’s. 

There was nothing gentle in the kiss, nothing soft or playful or caring.  It was all heat and passion and anger and Sam was powerless to do anything but open to it.  He didn’t want to do anything but open to it.  Gabe tasted like chocolate and ozone and his hands fell to grip Sam by the hips.  Sam couldn’t help moaning into his mouth or grabbing his shoulders as his blood heated and made him dizzy.

Gabe ripped his mouth away and left him panting.  On the next bed, Dean snorted and rolled onto his side, still asleep but only barely.  Gabe cast him a frustrated glare and then they were elsewhere.  Sam caught an impression of space, of sparsely decorated walls and soft, relaxing colors before Gabe pushed him flat on his back on a bed.  “You have been in my head constantly,” he growled.  “You never shut up, you never leave, always begging me to come back.  Well, here I am.  And now you’re mine!”  His mouth closed over Sam’s again, and it was heat and passion and anger again, but it was also something like need and possessiveness too.  Sam clutched at his back, not even surprised to feel bare skin beneath his fingers.

Gabe shifted and got a knee between Sam’s legs.  He twisted and pushed until Sam was splayed beneath him, thighs spread wide.  He shifted again and Sam felt him there, against the entrance to his body, and froze.  His fingers dug into Gabe’s back, not with urgent passion, but panic.  Gabe bit his bottom lip before lifting his head.  “Never done this before?” he asked.  Sam shook his head a little frantically.  “Do you want to?”

“Yes, but –“

“Yes or no, Sam,” Gabe cut in. “Do you want to give yourself to me?”

Sam took a breath and let it out slowly.  “Yes,” he said simply, forcing the panic back.  He knew enough to know that, even with proper preparation, the first time could hurt.  Without it, it definitely _would_.  But if that was what Gabe wanted or needed, then Sam could take it.

“Then trust me.  If you want me so badly, then the only way you’ll get me is to _trust me_.”  Gabe held his gaze and the storm of emotion that had been there earlier had died out.  All that shone from his eyes was expectation and need.  Sam recalled every moment that he’d spent with the Trickster, every time he’d placed his hand in Gabe’s and let him take him anywhere he wanted without protest or question.  Gabe could have taken him anywhere, done anything to him, and Sam would have been – still was – powerless to do anything about it.  Dean would have never had a clue.  In the end, it wasn’t so much that Sam decided to trust Gabe, it was more that he realized that he already did.  Most of the tension went out of his body and he pushed down a little, against the cock pressed against him.  For the first time, a hint of a smile touched Gabe’s lips.  “Stupid, stupid human,” he whispered.  He pushed inside and there was no pain.  There was pressure, and stretching, and a heat that no human could possibly generate, but there was no pain.  Then Gabe was inside him all the way, and there was nothing but a pleasure that Sam had never come close to feeling before in his life.

~

Sam lay on his side, both hands tucked beneath his face.  Gabe was sprawled beside him on the bed cheerfully munching his way through a bag of M&M’s.  There was no evidence of the anger he’d displayed when Sam had woken up from his nightmare.  Instead he seemed more like a lazy, contented cat, and Sam wanted to reach out and just...touch him.  He wanted to stroke the skin that had been so soft and smooth against him earlier.  He wanted to lick the remnants of chocolate out of the mouth that had stolen his breath so effectively.  But he didn’t reach out.  He couldn’t.  The last time he’d done so it had made Gabe angry enough to leave him alone for three months.

“If you stare at me any harder, I might just end up with holes where they shouldn’t be,” Gabe commented, a small spray of chocolate and candy coating flying from his mouth.  If Sam hadn’t already known he was in trouble, that alone would have told him.  Rather than finding it gross, as he would with anyone else, he thought it was funny.  And kind of adorable.  “Just ask,” he added.  “Whatever it is that you want, just ask.”

“Fine.  Am I allowed to touch you now without you getting all pissed off about it?”  Sam held his breath, absolutely sure there had been a better way to phrase that.

Gabe stilled, one hand halfway to his mouth with another handful of candy.  “I meant, ask me for whatever boon you’re hoping for.”

Sam pushed himself into a sitting position.  “Boon?” he murmured.  He tilted his head, mind ticking things over.  Last time, he had given a gift that he had known would please Gabe.  This time, he’d given himself, his virginity (relatively speaking) to him.  There _were_ old rituals based around those same elements, although he wasn’t aware of any specifically pertaining to Tricksters.  Nevertheless, Gabe was one of the old style gods and those elements would certainly resonate with him.

“Yes, Sam, boon.  Blessing.  Gift. Favor.  Whatever you want to call it, just ask me for it.”

“I never had any intention of requesting a boon,” Sam told him.  He pushed himself further away until he could slide off the enormous bed.  “I never wanted gifts or favors.  I just wanted you.”  He walked away, although he knew he was pretty limited in how far he could get.  He didn’t know where the apartment was located, if it was even in a city rather than on a deserted island or at the top of a mountain.  He didn’t know if there was a door that would lead out.  And he had no clothes, no money, no weapons.

Gabe appeared in front of him, angry again.  “Bullshit, Winchester,” he snarled.  “You’re too smart to not have thought about all the ways that I could help you, the things I could give you.  Why else would you keep coming with me?  Why else would you make offerings and give yourself to me?”

Without thinking, Sam reached out and shoved him.  “Because I like you, you idiot!  It’s probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but I freakin’ like you!  You kill people, and whether they deserve it or not, I’ve been taught all my life that that means you’re evil, but I like you.  I like spending time with you.  I like talking to you.  All I wanted was more of _you,_ God help me.  I should be trying to kill you, and all I can think about is kissing you.  I never intended to make any _offerings_ , and I gave myself to you because I wanted to.”

“Well.”  Gabe straightened and put his hands on his hips.  “And I’m just supposed to believe that?  I’ve been around the block, Sam.  More than once.  Are you really going to try to tell me that you’ll never ask for my help?  With anything?”

Sam opened his mouth to do just that, then hesitated.  “I can’t see the future.  I’ll probably be tempted, at the very least,” he allowed.  “But Dean and I, we were trained to take care of ourselves.  And yeah, sometimes we need help, and sometimes we even manage to ask for it.  But I won’t intentionally ask you.  You just don’t get to blame me for _thinking_ about it,” stabbing a finger sternly towards the Trickster.  Gabe stared back, not saying anything, anger and scorn clear on his face.  “You don’t believe me,” Sam realized.  “Fine then.  Why don’t you go ahead and read my mind?”

“I can’t.”  Gabe shook his head when Sam looked skeptical.  “I can read your surface thoughts easily enough, and of course they’re all focused on what you’re saying.  But to read deeper, below the surface?  Sam, human minds are...very fragile.  At best, there would be minor damage – coordination or memory problems.  At worst, you’d be left a vegetable.”

Sam threw up his hands and turned away.  “Then send me back to Dean, because I don’t know how to convince you.”

He heard a sigh behind him and a hand touched his shoulder.  “Sam, I’m not going to send you back to Dean.  Not yet, anyway.”  Sam let himself be turned around.  “I will offer you this...deal...this compromise.  I will take you at your word.  I won’t bring it up again, you won’t bring it up again.  We will continue on as we were, with added sex, for as long as we both want.  However, if you ever ask me for a favor – a true favor, not simply requesting a specific food or destination – then you will never see me again.  And there’s no guarantee that I’ll grant that favor before I go.  Does that work for you?”

“So long as you agree that being tempted doesn’t mean the same thing as actually asking,” Sam pressed.

“Yeah yeah.  So are we good?”

Sam twitched, wondering how Gabe could think it was so easy.  Then he realized that, in fact, it was that easy.  Gabe had thought one thing, Sam had corrected him, and Gabe was willing to go on faith that Sam had told the truth.  “Yeah.  We’re good.  Although you never did answer my question.”

For an instant, Gabe looked blank.  Then he rolled his eyes.  “Yes, Sam, you’re allowed to touch me.  Sex would be pretty boring if you didn’t.”

“Good.”  Sam stepped closer and leaned down.  Gabe met him halfway and sealed their mouths together as his hands tangled themselves in Sam’s hair.  “Very good,” Sam mumbled against his lips, pressing his hardening cock into his lover.  The height difference made the position too awkward to get the kind of contact that Sam wanted, so he grabbed a double handful of Gabe’s ass and started walking backwards to the bed.

Gabe laughed into his mouth when they tumbled onto it.  The second time around was just as intense, just as mind-blowingly pleasurable.  But there was no edge of desperation or anger to Gabe’s touches or kisses.  Instead, it was thoroughly playful, closer to what Sam had imagined it would be the few times he’d allowed himself to think about it.

Afterwards, Sam realized that the M&M’s had spilled out over the bed and he had smears of chocolate and broken candy bits all over him.  Gabe helpfully offered to clean him up, which led directly into the third time.

Sam lay on his side again, though he had a languid Trickster curled around him.  He was tired, pretty sore (a good sore, but still) and hungry.  He also had to pee.  He ignored his bladder until it became too insistent, and then reluctantly sat up.  “You got a bathroom in this place?”

“Mmm, bathtub sex,” Gabe murmured, trailing a hand down Sam’s chest to his crotch.  Sam twitched away, prompting Gabe to open his eyes with a frown.  “No bathtub sex?”

“No bathtub sex,” Sam confirmed.  He paused and considered it for a second.  “Not yet, anyway.  I need to...use a toilet, Gabe.  Messy human business.”

“Oh, right.  Through that door.”  He waved vaguely over his shoulder.

Sam had to climb over Gabe to get out of the bed and Gabe caught him while Sam was straddling him for a kiss.  It was only the fact that an accident was imminent that lent Sam the strength to break the kiss and keep going.  He didn’t remember the door having been there while he and Gabe had talked things out, but of course that didn’t mean anything.  The bathroom beyond it was – _opulent_ was the only word that Sam could think of.  It was huge and bright, all cream porcelain and gold fixtures.  Once Sam had relieved himself, he looked around more closely and grinned.  The entire theme of the room, apart from rich, was orgy.  The gold that decorated the walls was laid out in scenes from various cultures, and each of the scenes was of sex.  Some of the tamer scenes depicted two people, the rest were group sex scenes, scenes of sex involving humans and mythological creatures, even a few of sex between mythological creatures only.  Sam found himself squinting at what he thought was a minotaur and a harpy going at it.

He was still studying it when the door banged open behind him.  “Did you fall in, Sam-cakes?  Ohhh.”  Gabe walked up and slid his arms around Sam’s waist.  He rested his head against Sam’s shoulder so they could both look at the picture.  “Like the decor?  I do all my own decorating.”

“I kind of gathered that.  I almost hate to even ask, but...did Medusa _really_ do those kinds of things with her snake hair?” he asked, pointing at a different scene higher up the wall.

Gabe laughed.  “Oh, Sam, what that woman had her snakes trained to do was unbelievable!  Made up and then some for the scaly skin.”

“Okay, you know what?  Don’t tell me.  I think I’m far too young for those kinds of stories, especially if you’re going to suggest that you were part of them.”

Gabe turned and pushed until Sam was pressed up against the pornographic wall behind him.  “I’m older than you realize, Sambear.  I can teach you all kinds of things.”

“I’m sure you can.  The question is, do you want me scarred for life?”

“Wuss,” Gabe laughed.  He snapped his fingers.  “Bath time, Sam-I-am.”  Gabe manhandled him again until his knees bumped the rim of the enormous tub.  A somewhat alarming glint appeared in his eyes.  It was all the warning that Sam got before he was shoved backwards.

He wasn’t hurt, of course.  The tub had grown even bigger, probably at the same instant that Gabe pushed him, and bore more resemblance to a swimming pool than a bathtub.  It was still filled to overflowing with strawberry scented bubbles, however, which naturally flooded the bathroom in a tidal wave.  Sam swam to the surface and laughed at the sight of Gabe standing there, hair drenched and bubbles trickling down his body.  He wore a faintly bemused expression, as though things hadn’t gone exactly as he’d planned them.  “Didn’t think that one through all the way, did you?”

“I guess not.  Oh well, it’s not like I wasn’t going to get wet anyway.”  Gabe stepped up on the rim and grinned.  “Canon ball!”  He leapt into the air, higher than a human could have jumped, tucked his legs and landed in the water.  The splash he made put Sam’s splash to shame.  Sam spluttered and wiped suds out of his eyes.  Gabe didn’t resurface.  Sam gave the situation a moment’s thought and took a deep breath just as a hand closed around his ankle.  He didn’t fight it as he was dragged down until he was standing on the bottom.  He wrapped his legs around Gabe’s waist to anchor himself and fit their mouths together.  A little bit of water slipped into his mouth along with Gabe’s tongue and it tasted like strawberries.

~

“Hmm, can we go out for dinner tonight?” Sam asked drowsily.  He was laying on his side with an arm thrown over Gabe’s hips and his head pillowed on his belly.  He didn’t really want to move, but at the same time, after a week of being in the apartment, he was feeling an itch under his skin to make sure the outside world was still there.  And his stomach had begun to growl, which prompted that particular question.

“Sure, Samkins.  Where would you like to go?  Paris?  Rome?  Vienna?”  Gabe carded his fingers through Sam’s hair gently, a soothing motion that Sam had found could put him to sleep faster than almost anything.

Sam cracked an eye and looked up the length of Gabe’s body.  He seemed as content as Sam felt, a hint of a smile hovering around his mouth and his eyes a soft brown.  “Ah, actually, I was sort of hoping for that steakhouse you took me to?”  He paused and consulted his stomach.  “Soon?  I’m getting really hungry.”

“Well, we can’t have that, can we?  Need to keep your energy up.”  He raised a hand and snapped his fingers. 

They appeared on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, and for one horrible moment, Sam was certain that Gabe had brought them there _naked._   He actually patted his chest before he registered the feeling of cloth against his skin.  Gabe laughed outright at him.  Sam glared at him, which only seemed to amuse the Trickster more.

They were seated right away in a small corner table.  Sam ordered approximately half a cow’s worth of food, and then fell into the story that Gabe began telling him.

“...and he woke up bare-assed naked, in the center of the village with his arms around the goat and the pig cuddled up against his back!” Gabe finished as the waitress arrived with their food.  Sam jumped when she cleared her throat, and he wasn’t sure if he should laugh or groan.  The waitress eyed them both nervously as she laid their food out on the table.  The moment the last plate hit the table, she turned and scurried away.  “Your turn.  You had to have played a few pranks on your brother over the years.”

“Sure.”  Sam started cutting into his meat, all but drooling over the smell alone.  “But honestly, I’d have to say I lost most of our prank wars.”  He glanced up at the skeptical noise Gabe made.  “Really.  I mean, I did the prerequisite embarrassing pictures and swapping sugar for salt and things, but Dean was always a little more creative than me.”  He stuffed a piece of porterhouse into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully for a while.  “Although that might be because he was willing to be more ruthless than I was.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, like, okay.  Dean is...you don’t get to tell him I told, because I’ll never hear the end of it, but Dean is really picky about his hair.  He always has been, ever since he started noticing girls.  So he always had all kinds of hair products, different gels and hair spray and stuff.  So, during one of our prank wars, I swapped out his gel for sparkly glue.  It was just a kid’s glue, so it washed out, but I did it on a morning that he was running late for school, so he didn’t notice it right away.  He had to go to school with sparkly hair.  And he got me back big time.” 

“How?”  Gabe reached over and snagged a piece of steak off of Sam’s plate.  Sam retaliated by grabbing a chunk of his ribs and then had to resist the urge to call the waitress back to order his own.

“He put Nair in my shampoo.”  Gabe snickered and Sam nodded.  “I know, bald-Sam is funny, right?  Except I was also a nerd, so when I showed up to school bald, that just made my life worse.  Plus, Nair is some nasty stuff, and I ended up with mild chemical burns on my scalp.”  Sam thought it over again as he plowed through more of his food.  “There was this one time that Dad took us camping.  After we’d done all the tracking and wilderness survival training stuff that Dad wanted us to do, we got a few days just camping by the river.  Dean thought it would be really funny to put a crayfish down my shorts.  Damn thing pinched my ass so hard I was bruised for a week.”  He snickered, remembering.

“Oh now, you _had_ to have gotten him back good for that one.  C’mon, spill!”

“Oh yeah.  Dean snuck a few swigs of Dad’s whiskey one night.  He was old enough that Dad didn’t mind too much if he noticed, so long as it was just a few swallows.  But it used to put Dean out like a light.  So once he was passed out, I pantsed him.  By morning, he had so many mosquito bites that he actually looked diseased.  And they were in some extremely unfortunate spots.”

Gabe laughed, head thrown back and hand smacking the table.  “That’s m’boy!”  Sam ducked his head, hiding a smile.  Neither he nor Dean had sat right for days after that camping trip, and John had flat out refused to take them camping again until Sam was in his teens.  But, if Sam twitched a little whenever anyone mentioned Nair, then Dean sure twitched whenever anyone mentioned camping.  Gabe’s laughter cut off abruptly and Sam looked up to see him frowning off to the side.  Sam followed his gaze to see a group of what looked like businessmen being ushered to a booth not far from them.  “Vacation’s over, Sam.  Looks like work just walked in.”

“Your work, I take it.”  Sam chewed his lip, torn between asking and blissful ignorance.  “What are – no, never mind.”

“Denial, Sam?  I’m a Trickster, punishing the arrogant bastards of the world is what I do,” Gabe reminded him.

“I know.  I just prefer not to think about how far you sometimes take that punishment.”

“Hmm, well then, why don’t I let you come up with the punishment this time.”  Gabe leaned over the table conspiratorially.  “You see the man in the gray suit, the one with black hair and the dark red tie?”  Sam turned his head a fraction to study the group until he spotted the man.  Even from a few yards away, there was a definite arrogant air about the guy.  Sam nodded.  “He works in advertising.  Those guys are usually on the arrogant side, but he goes right past arrogant and out the other side into outright douchebaggery.  He likes pretty, young assistants.  He likes to pressure his pretty young assistants into sex.  Even out with his coworkers, all he can think about is what he can make his newest assistant do.  He keeps a running tally of how many he goes through and how quickly.  So you tell me what you think would be fitting.”

Sam found that he’d clenched his steak knife in his fist and put it down.  “Nice,” he bit out.  “Guys like that really piss me right the hell off.”  Gabe raised an eyebrow.  “My girlfriend, Jess,” he explained haltingly.  “She was – she was gorgeous.  And she had a sleazy boss for a while at the store she worked at.”  Sam focused again on the table full of suited men and studied the one in question.  “He’s in good shape,” he noted.  “Perfect hair, tailored suit, probably spends a lot of time in the gym.”  Gabe nodded and Sam narrowed his eyes in thought.  “Okay, if it were up to me?  Every time he hits on an employee, his dick shrinks.  Every time he presses the issue, tries to intimidate a woman into sleeping with him, he ends up with a rash.  A boil.  Weight gain and hair loss.  He’ll end up with numerous useless and embarrassing trips to the doctor, and if he keeps it up, he’ll end up so ugly, distracted, and frustrated that he’ll lose clients and his job.  But, a genuine change of heart reverses it.”

“And if he starts back in again, it all starts over again,” Gabe mused.  A slow, wicked smile crossed his face.  “That’s lovely, Sam.  Really hits him where it’ll hurt.  Self perpetuating, self solving.”  He picked up Sam’s hand and gave him a tongue-filled kiss on the wrist.  “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

Sam grinned, more pleased than he should have been by that.  “Yeah, well....”  He caught a glimpse of Gabe’s target eyeing them with disgust.  Eyes on him, Sam leaned over the table for a proper kiss and watched as the guy nudged one of his companions and pointed them out with a sneer.  “Maybe add some steamy gay porn to his dreams,” Sam suggested.  “Just because.”

“Boy, you’re just adjusting his attitude all over the place,” Gabe said approvingly.  He gave Sam a peck on the nose before he pushed him back into his seat.  “Finish dinner and I’ll pop you back to your brother.”

Gabe was true to his word.  As soon as they’d paid and walked out of the restaurant he sent Sam back to bed with a kiss.  Sam looked down at the cotton pants and t-shirt that he hadn’t seen for a week and shrugged.  He arranged the blankets over himself and snuggled in as best he could, considering that the motel bed wasn’t anywhere near as comfortable as Gabe’s bed and tried to get some sleep.

~

Sam walked away from Jake, more relieved than he could say that he wouldn’t have to try to kill the other man.  They could really use someone like him, and the man certainly deserved to be in on the end of the fight.  He heard a sound and looked up to see Dean and Bobby rounding the corner at the edge of town.  “Dean?” Sam half laughed, relief of a whole different kind washing over him. 

He had a split second to register his brother’s face creasing in sudden alarm before pain exploded out from his back.  Even before his knees hit the mud, Sam knew what had happened.  And that there was no surviving it.  Dean caught him on his way down, voice spilling frantically into his ear although Sam couldn’t quite make out the words.  _God, Dean, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, don’t do anything stupid I love you._ Then, as his vision started to darken around the edges: _Gabe, I’m sorry, I love you.  Should have told you, I love you._

Sam thought he saw someone, an older man in a funeral dark suit, walk up behind his brother.  The man seemed to hold out his hand towards him, and Sam started to lift his own to take it.

“Oh no you don’t!” a voice snarled.  Sam felt a hand slap down on the top of his head.  His vision cleared, his lungs started to work, and the pain was just gone.  All he felt was the mud soaking into his jeans and his brother’s arms wrapped protectively around him.  “I told you, Winchester – you are mine!”

Sam fell to the side as Dean wrenched him around to place himself in front of Sam.  “You, don’t you touch him, I don’t know how, I’ll kill you, I swear to God!” Dean growled. 

Sam heard the slide of a shotgun and rolled onto his back.  He pushed himself up on one arm and tried to grab the gun from his brother.  “Don’t, Dean, please!  He didn’t do this, he won’t hurt me.  He saved me, Dean, put the gun down.”

“What?  Sam, no, it’s the Trickster, I’m not going to let him hurt you.”  Dean tried to shake him off, but Sam was persistent and managed to grab the gun out of his hand.

“I’m telling you, Dean, he won’t hurt me.”  Sam got to his knees and looked up.  Gabe glared down at them, fury blazing gold from his eyes.  Sam swallowed and held out a hand.  “Gabe, please, I didn’t ask.  I know I didn’t ask,” he whispered.

Gabe glared for a few seconds longer, then snorted.  The inhuman glow faded from his eyes.  “No, you didn’t ask, Samkins.  But maybe you should have before, oh say, you got stabbed in the back and ended up seconds away from dead.”

“That wasn’t my fault!  That was Jake, and I didn’t think he would do something like that.”  Sam started to pull his hand back and Gabe reached out to take it and haul him to his feet.  Then Sam found himself being kissed to within an inch of his life and could only hang on.

“Get your slimy mouth off of my brother,” Dean ordered.  Sam pulled away and saw that Dean had found himself a thick branch, jagged at one end, and held it ready. 

“Damn it, Dean, I’m serious.  You don’t get to try to kill him, okay?  He – he brought me back.  I could see the damn Reaper reaching for me.  Why would he hurt me after bringing me back?”

“Because he’s a Trickster, that’s just the kind of shit they do!”  Dean glanced behind them.  “Bobby, I could use a little help, here!”

Sam squeezed his eyes shut for a moment.  Bobby would want to kill Gabe just as much as Dean did.  “Stop it!” he yelled.  He backed off to the side with Gabe behind him, careful to keep himself between Gabe and Dean and Bobby.  “That’s enough, I swear.  You aren’t listening to me, Dean.”

“I would if you were talking sense!” Dean yelled right back. 

Sam turned to give Gabe a dirty look.  “If you’d have let me tell him before this, we would not be having this issue right now.”

“If I had let you tell him before this, he would have done his level best to keep me away from you,” Gabe shot back.

“Tell me what?  Sam, what did he do to you?”

“Oh, all kinds of things, Deanie Baby.  The easier question would be what _haven’t_ I done to him?”  Like a switch had been flipped, the anger was completely gone, replaced by Gabe’s usual cocky, smart-assed humor.  He stepped in front of Sam and leaned back against him, one hand at his side gripping Sam’s thigh.

“Oh, thank you for that,” Sam muttered.  He could see the fury rising in his brother and started to talk.  “Look, Dean, it started way back on that campus.  I went back that night because things just didn’t seem right and he was there, and we talked.  We just talked, nothing else, and then a few days later he came back and offered to give me the scoop on what we were hunting if I agreed to spend a day with him, and it was fine.  Okay?  He gave me the right info and I spent the day with him and he brought me back right after I’d left and I wasn’t hurt or cursed or under any kind of spell.  And he kept coming back and we – hung out.  We played miniature golf!”

“I won,” Gabe interjected smugly.  “The giant clown head really threw him off his game.”

Sam pinched his side without thinking.  “We just goofed around, Dean.  We talked.  And it’s been almost a year now and he hasn’t done anything to us.  I’m not saying he’s on the side of angels and puppies, but he’s not evil, either.  And he just saved my life.”

“Months,” Dean said, disbelief clear.  “Where the hell did you find the time to do all the shit you said?  We’re never apart for all that long, Sam.”

“Um, he kind of...bends time?  I think?  Obviously I don’t know exactly what he does, but it’s time manipulation.  He comes and gets me while you’re occupied, sleeping or showering or on a food run, we hang out, and he brings me back to a point just a couple seconds after we left.”

“So you’ve been knocking boots with a demi-god for almost a year and didn’t tell me.  That’s great, Sam.  That’s just – I swear, if you hadn’t just almost died, I’d wring your friggin neck.”

Sam opened his mouth to correct Dean and closed it just as quickly.  Exactly how long he’d been intimate with Gabe didn’t really matter, and quibbling over it would only serve to irritate Dean further.  He settled for, “I’m sorry.  I should have found a way to tell you.”

“That’s all well and good,” Bobby rumbled.  “But I think it could wait a while.  We have more pressing concerns right now.  We should get the hell outta Dodge before something really nasty shows up.”

“Too late,” Dean said, shooting a glare at Gabe.

“So, Deano, you want me to put Sam back the way I found him when I got here?  Would that make you feel better?”  Dean froze, eyes wide and mouth open.  Even beneath the pale moonlight, Sam could tell that he had gone chalky white.  “Didn’t think so.  So can it already.”

“Boy’s right about that.  We need to get out of here and figure out what in the hell is going on.  We’ll figure out a way to kill _him_ later,” Bobby told Dean.  Sam clutched at Gabe for a moment before he reminded himself that they hadn’t been all that successful the first time around, and they sure as hell wouldn’t get any closer on a second try.

“Nice family you got there, kid.  Classy,” Gabe drawled.  He turned in Sam’s arms and looped an arm around his waist.  “We could hit Jamaica,” he offered.  “Rio?  C’mon, Sam, you’d love Carnival!”

“Not helping.”  Sam bent and brushed a kiss over his lips.  “We’ll do that later, okay?  Anywhere, anything you want.  But I have to go with my brother right now.  There’s some serious shit happening that we have to deal with.”

“Great, so you can die again?  You think I’m going to keep bringing you back every time you kick it?” Gabe snapped.

“No, I know you won’t, and I won’t ask you to.  I just really need to take care of this.”

“Fine.  But you don’t get to bitch at me about the chocolate sauce anymore, Samalam.  I mean it – deal with the sticky.”  Gabe stepped back and cocked his head at Dean.  “We getting out of here or what?”

“You coming with us?” Bobby asked, eyes narrowed.

“Sure.  Watching you chuckleheads try to figure this out should be a laugh and a half.”  A chocolate bar appeared in his hand and he took a huge bite.  “I can always use the entertainment.”

“Hey, that works for me,” Dean agreed, a dangerous gleam in his eyes.  He traded a look with Bobby then turned on his heel to walk away.  “Get a move on, Sam,” he called back.  “I want you where I can see you.”

“Oh, this isn’t going to be fun,” Sam muttered.

“Speak for yourself,” Gabe told him.  “I’m already having a blast.”

All four of them piled into Dean’s car.  Dean refused to allow Gabe to sit shotgun.  Bobby refused to sit next to Gabe in the backseat.  Gritting his teeth, Sam pushed Bobby at the front passenger door while he climbed into the back beside Gabe.  Bobby sat a little sideways so he could keep his eyes on them, and the music stayed off which gave him no cover to have a private conversation with Gabe on the way to Bobby’s place.  And with Bobby watching so closely, he didn’t even feel comfortable reaching out to touch his lover. 

Gabe spent the entire drive eating candy, which resulted in flecks of chocolate and peanuts getting all over, which resulted in Dean turning red and sputtering in rage.  Roughly half way to Bobby’s he offered Sam a ham sandwich, still steaming and with cheese oozing out the sides.  Sam fell on it so fast he came close to catching Gabe’s fingers and got yelled at.

“Don’t eat that, Sam!” Bobby barked.  “You can’t just take food from – _have you lost your mind_?  I know you know the lore on eating anything otherworld entities offer.  I taught it to you myself!”

Sam shoved a good portion of the sandwich in his mouth and chewed defiantly.  He swallowed with difficulty and said, “Bobby, Gabe has never hurt me or tricked me into any kind of bargain with him.  I have eaten the food he’s given me before and I haven’t come to any ill effects.  I am not bound in any way.  Would you relax?”

“Have you forgotten that he tried to kill us?”

“He wasn’t really serious about that,” Sam said defensively.  The car swerved briefly before Dean got it back under control.  Bobby just looked incredulous.  “He wasn’t!  C’mon, Bobby, one clumsy guy with a chainsaw and a couple of unarmed, barely dressed women weren’t all that much of a threat.  If he’d wanted, he could have filled that room with _anything,_ and any number of them.”

“So you’re saying it was just a trick to make us think we won?”

“Helloooo,” Gabe drawled.  He fluttered his fingers at his face.  “Trickster here!  It’s kind of my thing?  Although I gotta say, you disappointed me just a little, Singer.  Sam noticed that things were off, so why didn’t you?”

“What things?”

“How easy it was.  The fact that, when chainsaw guy and the women vanished, the rest of the props remained,” Sam explained.  “Lecture halls don’t normally come equipped with a giant, sleazy bed.”  Bobby opened and closed his mouth a few times and Sam shrugged.  “It should have all vanished when the Trickster died, ergo, the Trickster didn’t die.  We killed a carbon copy.”  Bobby tugged his cap lower on his head and crossed his arms, discussion apparently over.

Sam finished his sandwich then gave Gabe a hopeful look.  Gabe rolled his eyes, sighed as though Sam were an enormous trial, and handed him a frosty glass bottle of cherry soda.  Unthinking, Sam leaned over for a brief thank you peck.  The car swerved again as Bobby started to choke, apparently, on air.  “Sam!  No necking in the car!” Dean howled.

“Necking?”  Sam frowned down at his bottle of soda.  He looked at Gabe.  Then he looked up and met Dean’s eyes in the mirror.  “Dean, if that’s your idea of necking, then we need to have a really long talk.  I know you brag about your sex life a lot, but...I think you’re doing it wrong.”  Beside him, Gabe burst out laughing.  Full on, bent over holding his belly laughing. 

“Dude, that’s not funny, and you know damn well what I mean.  There is to be no funny business in my car,” Dean told him, half shouting to be heard over Gabe.  Sam bit his lip to suppress the laughter even as his face started to turn red in remembrance.  Dean caught the look and brought the car to a stop.  “Sam.  Tell me you didn’t.  Not in my _car!”_

“Well, you sexiled me one too many times, Dean.  Or, well, I guess it’s more like closed-mouth-kissing-while-holding-hands-a

nd-staring-into-each-other’s-eyesiled.  But still.”  He reached over to pat Dean on the shoulder.  “Don’t worry, I cleaned the upholstery.” 

“Would you stop?” Bobby barked at him.  “I wanna get home some time this century.  And frankly, I ain’t interested in hearing about your sex life.  We’ve got a serious situation on our hands, here, and we don’t have time for this crap.”

“Buzzkill,” Gabe snorted.  “But if you’re that anxious to get home quickly, I suppose I can oblige you.”  He raised his hand and snapped his fingers.  Dean shouted wordlessly, clutching at the wheel.  Bobby turned around slowly, looked through the windshield, and started swearing quietly.

“Um.”  Sam licked his lips nervously.  He fumbled for the door latch with one hand and grabbed Gabe’s hand with the other.  “I think we’ll just go inside and get some coffee started.  How does that sound?”  He didn’t wait for an answer as his hand finally found the latch and opened it.  He almost stumbled getting out and impatiently pulled Gabe along behind him.  He hurried up to the house.  They were stopped by the locked door, but only until Gabe snapped his fingers.  “Shit.”  Sam shot an apologetic look back at the car but went inside anyway.

“Is there any particular reason why we ran away?” Gabe asked, so amused that Sam knew he knew perfectly well.

“Because they weren’t expecting to be randomly teleported or whatever it is that you actually do, and they’re going to be pretty upset about it,” Sam told him anyway.  “Plus, you did it to Dean’s car.  I mean, he’d be worse if you left it behind, don’t get me wrong, but you whammied the car.”

“I worry about your brother, Sam.  He’s way, waaayy too attached to that car.”  Gabe shook his head.

“Yeah, well.  I’m pretty sure he doesn’t actually do indecent things to it.  Besides, Dad gave him that car, so I can kind of understand it.”  Sam peeked out the window to see Dean and Bobby still in the car, talking animatedly.  He could only hope that Bobby could get Dean calmed down enough to listen.  He turned back to Gabe, who was poking through some of the books stacked around the place, a faintly amused tilt to his mouth.  “Hey.  Uh, I guess you heard me.  Before.  When Jake stabbed me.”

Gabe tossed him an unreadable look.  “Kind of hard not to, Sambear.  You practically yelled in my head.”

“Yeah.  About what I said, I –“

“Forget it.  You thought you were about to kick it.  It’s the same as shit you say in bed – it doesn’t really count when the sweat dries.”

Sam walked over to him, leaned down, and caught his mouth in a hungry kiss.  Gabe made approving noises into his mouth, tongue eagerly twining with his.  Sam tore his mouth away and leant over further to kiss the side of his neck.  “I meant it,” he whispered.  “I don’t know if you care, if it’s something you want, and I won’t ever bring it up again if that’s what you want.  But I do.  I love you.  I don’t expect you to feel the same or to act any different.  I just wanted to tell you.  It’ll be one less regret when I do die.”

“You’re not going to die, Sam.  Not if you’re, say, _careful_.”  Gabe smacked him lightly upside the head.  “I know it’s a novel idea, but you should give it a try some time.”

Sam smiled and kissed his neck again.  “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Go make coffee,” Gabe sighed, pushing him gently away.

“Okay.”  As the coffee finished dripping into the pot, Dean and Bobby walked in, neither of them looking happy.  Wordless, Sam poured out three mugs of coffee.  He glanced at Gabe questioningly, but his lover shook his head slightly and produced what smelled like a mug of hot chocolate.  The mound of marshmallows floating on top seemed to support that theory.  Sam planted himself at the table with Gabe leaning against the counter behind him.  “So, where do you two want to start?  With what happened at the town or with Gabe?”

“We’re going to forget your boyfriend for the minute,” Dean told him, shooting a glare behind Sam that suggested he’d like to forget him permanently.  “What happened out there, Sammy?”

Sam stared down at his coffee and relayed everything that had happened.  Even, after some deliberation, the flashback that Yellow-Eyes had shown him of the night their mom died.

Dean hissed.  “Demon blood?  He made you drink demon blood?  That’s disgusting!”

Sam flinched and hunched over.  “Yeah, well, it’s not like it was my idea.”

“I didn’t say it was.  I’m just saying – it’s gross.  When I get my hands on that son of a bitch....”  Dean got up to get more coffee and added a liberal dose of whiskey to it.

“Yeah.  So you got the message that...Andy sent?”  Sam couldn’t help the little hitch when he said the other man’s name.  He’d liked the guy. 

“Yeah.  Didn’t feel great, but I got it.”  Dean flicked a glance at Bobby, then held out the whiskey to him.  Bobby took it with a nod, and topped up his mostly empty coffee cup.  “We’ve got news of our own.  The Roadhouse is gone, Sammy.  Burnt to the ground.”

“Fuck.  Ellen?”

“We don’t know,” Bobby told him.  “But Ash is gone.  Bunch of others, too, we’re not sure who all.  There wasn’t enough left to identify them.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Ash called me.  He said he had some pretty major information, but he wouldn’t tell it to me over the phone.  We were too late getting there.”

Sam slammed his fist down on the table and jumped to his feet.  He put his back to his brother and Bobby as he braced his hands on the counter, squeezing as tightly as he could to avoid punching anything else.  “What the hell do we do now?” he managed.  “That fucker was talking about an army of demons.  Where is it, what’s he going to do with it?  There was only supposed to be one of us left, so what happens now that I’m not dead?”

“I don’t know, Sammy.  We’ll figure this out, okay?”

“Yeah.  Right.”  Sam thumped the counter.  “I’m going for a walk.”  Without looking at anyone, he stalked outside.  He chose a spot some distance from the house behind an old Ford Econoline and sat on the ground with his back against it.  He stared up at the sky for a while, trying to think of absolutely nothing. 

A while later, the soft crunch of footsteps warned him that someone was approaching.  He didn’t look over when Dean sat beside him, but he did accept the proffered beer.  “We will figure this out, Sam.  I promise you.  We will find that son of a bitch and we’ll stop his plans, and we will find a way to kill him.”

“How?  Best we could do is maybe exorcize him, and a demon that powerful will be out of the Pit again in no time.”

“Yeah, well, if Colt could figure out how to make a gun that kills demons, I’m pretty sure we can, too.”

“Yeah, maybe.”  Sam took a swig of his beer and looked at his brother.  “I suppose you want to talk about Gabe.”

“You think?”  Dean snorted.  “Sam, what are you thinking?  He’s a monster,” Dean said quietly.

“He’s not a monster, Dean.  Just because he’s not human, it doesn’t make him a monster.”

“No, the fact that he kills people does.  No matter how much style he does it with.”

Sam stopped his automatic defense.  “I’m not sure if he’s still killing,” he eventually said.  “I haven’t asked.”

“Is that supposed to make it better?  Not knowing makes it okay?”

“No.  But...I’ve seen the types of people he goes for, Dean.  And I did some more research into the two people we know that he’s killed.  That professor?  He didn’t always stick to college girls for his affairs.  Sometimes, he taught an intro course at the local highschool.”  Dean winced.  “And the animal tester?  He lost his funding, then his mother died from a fall down the stairs – and left him enough money to fund his research for the next decade.  None of the girls would talk to the police, so there was no evidence, and there wasn’t any hard proof against the other guy either.  He’s not a saint, Dean.  I’m not saying he’s even close.  But I can’t help but think that he saves his fatal lessons for the ones that really do deserve it.”

“I still don’t trust him,” Dean insisted. 

“But I do, Dean.  I know it’s hard for you to understand.  I can’t really explain it myself, except to say that he could have done anything to me, any time he wanted.  And instead he took me swimming in the tropics.  He took me to dinner, and the movies, and a soccer game.  And we weren’t having sex that whole time.  That’s pretty new, and before you say it, getting me in bed wasn’t his goal.”

“How do you know?”

Sam looked down and started peeling the label on his bottle.  “Because I kissed him first and it pissed him off.  He almost literally dumped me back with you and I didn’t see him again for three months.  I guess he thought I was making an offering of myself so he would grant me a boon.  It took him a while to realize that I wasn’t.”

“You know, I’d almost think you were in love with him.  But considering the chicks that you’ve been hooking up with lately, I know that’s not the case.  So obviously this is pretty casual.  Why are you trying so hard to make me accept this?” Dean wondered.

“Um, because I _am_ in love with him.  The girls weren’t...they weren’t really girls, Dean.  They were Gabe.  He can, um, look like anything that he wants to.”

Dean was silent for a moment as he digested that.  “So, you’ve got this supernatural creature who can and apparently does take you anywhere in the world, for any length of time and can bring you back before I know you were gone, who can have any kind of face and body that you want, and _you’ve been sexiling me?”  
_  
“Sucks to be on the other side of that for a change, doesn’t it?”

“You little bitch!”

“Jerk.”

“I’m going to get you back for that, Sam,” Dean promised.  “Oh, I am so going to get you back for that.”  He pushed himself to his feet and held his hand out.  Sam let him pull him to his feet.  Dean messed up his hair.  “C’mon, it’s late.  We all need some sleep, and you could use a shower.  Besides, Gabe was making noises about reorganizing Bobby’s books for him.  There could be bloodshed if we leave them alone too long.”

Sam had a faint smile hovering on his lips that he couldn’t quite get rid of.  It only widened when they got back in the house and found Bobby literally blocking a stack of books with his body.  “I know where everything is, and I don’t need some jumped up pagan prankster messing with them!” he barked while Sam and Dean leaned in the doorway.

“See?” Dean said.  “I told you.  Your honey-bear seems to think that Bobby needs more bookshelves or something.”

“Honey-bear?” Sam protested.  “Don’t give him any ideas, I don’t actually like honey.” 

“Sam, you get your-your whatever, under control,” Bobby ordered.  “I don’t want him messing with my books.  If he messes with my books, he won’t be welcome in my house.”

Gabe turned and raised an eyebrow at him.  His eyes flicked to Dean suspiciously.  “Sam, is it time for Jamaica?”

“Not yet.  A shower, though, is very much on the agenda.”  He looked at Bobby.  “We’ll hit the books in the morning,” he promised.  “It’s been a long day.”

“Yeah, fine.  Get out of here, ya idjit.”

Sam nodded at the stairs, hoping Gabe would follow him.  Instead, Gabe walked over and laced their fingers together.  “I’ll bring him back in the morning,” he assured them grudgingly.  He didn’t allow anyone time to protest before transporting them to his apartment.  Straight into the bathroom, where the bath was already full of steaming, bubbly water.  The smell of strawberries filled the air, making Sam acutely aware of his own unwashed smell. 

Shrugging out of his jacket, he said, “You know I’m going to catch hell for that tomorrow, right?”

“You’re tough, you’ll survive.”  Gabe snapped his fingers, and Sam was naked.  “Now shut up and get in the tub.”

“Yes, sir.”  Sam snapped off a mocking salute, but wasted no time in sliding into the hot, scented bubbles.  Even before killing him, Jake hadn’t gone easy, and the hot water was heaven on his bruises.  He tipped onto his back and floated, eyes closed, for a while.  When he opened his eyes he saw Gabe standing beside the tub, just watching him.  Sam flipped in the water and swam over to him.  “Aren’t you coming in?”  He sniffed his armpit dramatically.  “I promise, I smell a lot better.”

Gabe smiled briefly.  “You told your brother that you’re in love with me,” he commented.  “It was all he could think about when you came back in.”

“Was I not supposed to?”

Gabe crouched so they were at eye level.  “Sam, you don’t even really know me.  You don’t know what I am, you don’t know a fraction of the things that I’ve done.”

“No, I don’t suppose I do,” Sam conceded.  “But...I don’t believe that you’ve lied to me.  I’m sure there’s parts of you that you haven’t shown me, but you haven’t lied about what you have let me see.  And I believe that whatever you say, you _do_ care about humanity.  You wouldn’t still bother with teaching people lessons at all if you didn’t.  I know you’ve killed people, Gabe.  I know you’ve put people through some seriously twisted stuff, and I know you had fun doing it.  And I still love you.  In a way I’m glad about what happened with Jake, because it meant that I had to tell Dean.  He’s my brother, and I wanted him to know about you.  I like that you’re not a secret anymore, and I like that he knows I love you.  He’s important to me, and it’s only right that he knows about the other people that are important to me.”

“You really are a giant marshmallow, aren’t you?”  Gabe smiled and tucked a strand of wet, possibly too long hair behind Sam’s ear.

“Yeah, maybe.”  Sam caught his hand and yanked, quicker than thought.  He caught a fleeting glimpse of Gabe’s surprised face before the Trickster landed in the water with a splash.  Sam held onto the side, laughing, as Gabe swam to the surface, spitting out water in a graceful arc like a fountain.

“You think you’re pretty funny, huh, Winchester?” Gabe said, a dangerous gleam in his eye

“Sometimes.”  Sam swam over to him and wrapped his arm around his neck.  “Whatcha gonna do about it?”

“Well, for starters, this.”  Gabe snapped his fingers and his sodden clothing vanished.  He gripped Sam by the waist and they both sank beneath the bubbles.

Later, when they were both relaxed and dry, Sam curled up on the sinfully comfortable bed.  Gabe lounged beside him, idly running his fingers through Sam’s hair.  “Sam?  I’m sorry about your friends,” he offered quietly.

Sam swallowed against the sudden lump in his throat.  “Thanks.  They were...good people.”

Gabe took him back to Bobby’s the next morning, real time.  He hadn’t even offered to loop a day or two, possibly because he knew that Sam wasn’t really in the mindset to agree.  Dean seemed surprised and relieved to see him.  Sam tried not to take it personally – Dean would adjust to Gabe’s presence.

“So how long were you gone this time?” Dean asked, shooting Gabe a cool look.

“Just the night,” Sam told him.  “We’re kind of in the middle of something.”

“And on that note, I’m out of here,” Gabe announced.  “Watching you three pore over musty old books isn’t my idea of fun.”  He tugged Sam down for a thorough kiss, snapped his fingers, and was gone.  Sam blinked at where he’d been standing, feeling heat creep slowly up his cheeks.  He wasn’t exactly used to PDA’s in front of his brother.

When he turned around, he found both Dean and Bobby staring at him.  Along with food piled high on the kitchen table.  “Good, uh, morning.  Breakfast, anyone?”  Sam slid into a chair and grabbed a plate to start filling.

“Man, we are so going to have a long talk about your boyfriend’s behavior,” Dean grumbled.  “Popping you in and out like that with no warning or even a ‘please, may I’ isn’t cool.”

“It’s a lousy idea,” Bobby snapped.  “Letting him get away with that.  We had no idea where you were, if you were okay, or even if he would really bring you back.  You aren’t thinking, Sam.  He’s dangerous.”

“I won him a pink panda at the fair,” Sam commented.  “He keeps it on a shelf over his bed.”  He shoved a fork full of pancakes topped with blueberries in his mouth.  He saw Dean eyeing the food and nudged a plate of crispy bacon towards him.  Dean shot a look at Bobby and shook his head.  Sam swallowed and sighed as he poured himself a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.  “You can eat the food, Dean.  Gabe wouldn’t have left so much if he didn’t intend for everyone to share.”

Dean glanced at Bobby again, looked at Sam, and seemed to come to a decision.  He grabbed a plate for himself and started filling it.  Something inside Sam relaxed and he shot his brother a grateful smile. 

“You’re both idjits,” Bobby informed them. 

“Sam trusts him, and I trust Sam.  Besides, I love bacon.”  Dean grabbed a slice, waved it at Bobby, and crunched down.  “Damn, that’s good,” he sighed.

“Well, hurry up, the pair of you.  We need to figure out what’s going on.”  Bobby frowned at Sam then, looking thoughtful.  “If your Trickster is so trustworthy, why don’t you ask him for help?”

Dean looked up and nodded.  “That’s not a bad idea, Sam.  He’s got some serious mojo going on, he could be a real help.”

“Yeah, no, not going to happen.”

“A lot of people could die, Sam.  A lot of people already have,” Bobby pointed out.  “If he’s such a good guy, you’d think he’d want to help.”

“I’m not going to ask,” Sam said firmly.  “I promised I never would, and I won’t.  I’m not peddling my ass to him so he can bail us out when things get tough.  We’re going to figure this out and take care of it the way we always have – with our brains and our guns, not by running to a higher power or whatever to have them wave a hand and fix everything.”

“So we’re supposed to trust that he’s a good guy when you’re afraid to ask and he won’t volunteer?  Sam, how do you know that he’s not involved with this mess?”

Sam put down his fork, appetite gone.  “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been angry at you before, Bobby.  You can think what you like about me – call me an idiot, whatever.  But don’t insult Gabe again.”  He pushed his chair back and stood up.  “I’m going to get started researching, see if I can find any sign of where the demon’s hanging out.”

*

Dean watched his brother stalk out of the kitchen.  He took another bite of the crispy, perfectly cooked bacon and raised an eyebrow at Bobby.  “It’s good bacon,” he commented.

“Dean, you can’t really be okay with this.  What Sam’s doing is _dangerous._   You don’t fool around with non-humans without getting hurt.  Even if this Trickster wasn’t really serious about wanting to kill us, he _has_ killed other people.”

“People that deserved it.  The type of people we all wish we could off but don’t, because it’s against the law and they’re human.  Look, I’m not saying I’m whole-heartedly approving, Bobby.”  He cut into his eggs and watched the yolk ooze out.  “I’ll be keeping my eye on things.  I always keep my eye on Sam.  And you know something?  The kid’s been a lot more settled, a lot happier, the last couple months.  Longer, actually, minus a few months in the middle when I guess the Trickster wasn’t coming around.  Sam isn’t built for a life of one night stands.  At this point, I don’t think he’d even consider a relationship with a normal chick, even if he found one who would put up with him coming and going for hunts.  Not after Jess and Madison.  Long as this Gabe doesn’t mess with him, I’d say he’s pretty much perfect for Sam.”  Dean flashed a grin as he dipped the bacon into the yolk.  “And hell, he’s got enough of a sense of humor to lighten up Broody McBrooderson in there.”

“It’s the sense of humor that I’m worried about.  Dean, you know that this thing is most likely playing some kind of trick.  It’s what they _do_.  And Sam is so deep he can’t see his way out.”

“Like I said, I always keep an eye on Sam.  If he’s messing with my brother, I’ll waste him.” 

“By the time you figure it out, it could be too late.”

Dean shrugged.  “Sam’s not stupid,” he said flatly.  “You know that.  He won’t do anything that puts himself or me in danger, Bobby.  He’ll see signs of anything being off.  And this Trickster – Gabe – did save his life.  He seems to have a vested interest in Sam remaining alive and healthy.  But more than that, Bobby, Sam cares about him.  We won’t be talking him out of this, so all we can do is keep quiet and watch.  All arguing will do is piss Sam off.  I know you’ve never really been on the receiving end of Sam’s temper, but believe me, it’s not pretty.  No one’s saying you gotta pretend to like it or be okay with it.  All I’m suggesting is that you don’t keep arguing about it.”

“Or what?” Bobby asked.

“Or we’ll probably never come back here, in which case, how can you keep an eye on things?  The last time Sam was this passionate about something, he didn’t talk to Dad for four years when he went to college.  And when I kept trying to get him to come back, even just for the summer, he stopped talking to me for two.  Sam’s the most stubborn son of a bitch I’ve ever met, and you’d have better luck knocking down a mountain with a hammer than you would getting him to change his mind once he’s made it.”  Dean shoved the last of his food in his mouth and stood up.  “I’m going to help Sammy research.”

*

Gabe didn’t come back.  Part of Sam was relieved, since Gabe’s absence meant that Bobby relaxed a little.  Mostly he was disappointed, though.  He’d kind of thought that, with the cat out of the bag, he’d get to spend a little more time with him.  On the other hand, they were in the middle of a very important hunt – possibly the biggest of their lives.  Gabe wouldn’t help, not that Sam would ask, and he’d only be a distraction if he were there.

Ellen showed up, and although she brought with her a cloud of grief for the men and women who’d been burned to death, she also brought the one vital clue that told them where Jake – and by extension, Yellow Eyes – would be.  All four of them packed up and headed to Wyoming.

Jake was not like Sam remembered.  It hadn’t been that long, but during the last few days, a significant change had come over the other man.  It wasn’t just the additional abilities.  Sam could feel, at the back of his mind, the itch of the power waiting to be used, in any way that he wanted to use it.  It wasn’t surprising that Jake had learned new ways of using it.  The biggest change, though, was the apparent total conversion to the dark side.  When he’d stabbed Sam in the back, Jake had been a terrified young man, out of his depth and doing what he thought he had to in order to save his own life.  Sam could understand that well enough – he’d been in plenty of kill or be killed situations, and he knew that’s what Jake had believed.  But Jake had also intended to find a way to kill the demon.  The Jake standing in front of them, forcing Ellen to hold her gun to her own head, had no doubts about what he was doing.  There was no sign of regret or fear or shame, just a kind of smugness.  It was obviously taking everything that Ellen had to resist the urge to pull the trigger. 

Jake was obviously not that practiced with that ability, though, or he’d be using it on Bobby and Dean as well.  Instead, he just made Ellen hold herself hostage.  Then he turned to put the gun in the lock.  That moment of distraction was all that was needed to break his hold over Ellen, but it was still too late.  The door opened, and all of Hell began to stream out into the world.  Sam fired and dropped Jake; maybe the damage was already done, but if Yellow Eyes had more plans, Jake wasn’t going to be there to help him carry them out. 

He ran over with Bobby and Ellen and the three of them slammed into the door.  It took everything they had, and Sam thought he might have tapped into a little of Jake’s ability on top of that, to get the door closed.  It slammed shut, and Sam expected there to be silence.  He expected the last of the demons that had escaped to wing away and leave the cemetery a void.  Instead, as the last of the demons left, he heard a voice talking over the sound of his brother’s pained gasps.

Sam was running before he realized it, and Yellow Eyes barely glanced at him as he sent Sam flying back into a tree.  “I am very, very interested in knowing how it is that Sam’s still alive.  You obviously didn’t make any deals,” the demon observed.  “Actually, I can tell that Sam never quite died.  How’d you boys manage that?”

“They had a little help,” Gabe observed.  Sam jerked his head around and saw his lover leaning casually against a tree, hands in his pockets.  “The youngest Winchester is mine; leave him alone, or I won’t be very happy, Azazel.”

“ _Yours_?”  Yellow Eyes – Azazel, apparently – curled his lip in contempt.  “I marked that boy as mine twenty-two years ago.  No jumped up pagan prankster is going to take him from me.”

“Think again, sulphur-sucker.  He’s mine, of his own free will.”  Gabe straightened, eyes flashing gold in the dark.  Sam scuttled around in wide circle until he reached his brother’s side.  He gave Dean a quick, concerned glance and was reassured when his brother waved him off as he got to his feet.  Together, they backed away from the confrontation until they were halted by Bobby and Ellen coming up behind them.  The four of them watched as Azazel apparently made up his mind and struck, landing a punch on Gabe’s face.  Sam knew his lover was powerful; he’d have to be to mess with time the way he did.  But Gabe wasn’t even rocked on his heels by the blow, and that more than anything else made Sam fear his lover, just for an instant.  Azazel was _strong_ , easily the most powerful demon they’d ever come across, and a blow from him should have made Gabe move.

The punch may not have hurt, but it was apparently enough to irritate Gabe into motion.  While Azazel was still looking...puzzled by Gabe’s lack of reaction, Gabe punched him back.  Azazel staggered backwards, then launched himself at Gabe.  The two laid into each other then, faster than humans could fight, almost faster than Sam’s eyes could register.  Gabe was somewhat hindered in a way that Azazel wasn’t, since the demon didn’t really care if the debris they sent flying hit any of the humans and Gabe apparently did. 

Dean nudged his side and Sam reluctantly tore his gaze away from the fight to look at his brother.  Dean held the Colt, eyebrows raised.  The Colt, with its one last bullet.  Sam looked back at the fight and he couldn’t see a way for it to work.  They were good shots – excellent shots, in fact – but the two figures were moving too fast even for them.  They ran the risk of missing altogether, or worse, hitting Gabe instead.  So unless Gabe managed to knock Azazel down hard enough that the demon stayed, even for a few seconds....

“Dear God...John?” Ellen whispered.  Sam whipped around, Dean mirroring the movement beside him.  John Winchester, seemingly as solid as ever, strode across the cemetery towards the fight.  His eyes blazed with satisfaction as he grabbed the demon around the neck and threw him.  The demon got to his feet again after a moment, eyes fixed on John briefly before something made him turn to look at Dean just as Dean fired.  The demon shook as lightening danced over his body for a moment, then the unholy fire that was his eyes winked out. 

Sam realized he was clutching at his brother as their father turned to look at them.  John didn’t speak, simply glanced back and forth between them with a proud, satisfied smile on his face.  Then he turned and walked away, fading into the night.

Slowly, Sam approached the demon’s body with Dean keeping pace beside him.  “My whole life,” he murmured dazedly.  “Ever since I can remember, this is what we’ve been searching for.  I don’t know what to say.”

“I do.”  Sam looked at his brother, feeling a little lost, a lot confused.  “That’s for our mother, you son of a bitch,” Dean growled.  It summed things up perfectly.  Grounded again, Sam gave the body one last look before resolutely turning his back.  His eyes landed on Gabe and he smiled as he started across the cemetery towards him.  Gabe’s face was unreadable as Sam approached.

“Okay, that’s about enough of this,” a man said, suddenly _there_ between him and Gabe.  Sam stopped short, eyeing the figure.  He was an older man, somewhere in his fifties, with receding hair and a smarmy air about him.  Whatever he was, Sam thought that part of that description would have to be ‘bootlicker’.  He completely ignored Sam and turned to Gabe.  “Loki, isn’t it?  Well, Loki, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to stop interfering.  Sam here has a very specific destiny which does not include being your bed warmer.  You’ve already made things a bit more difficult than they should have been, but as long as you go play with someone else, we’ll let that go.”

“Oh, I really don’t think so,” Gabe drawled, amusement dripping from every syllable.  “Sam belongs to me.  And, y’know, I know exactly what you’ve got planned for him and I’ve decided I really don’t like it.  So it’s not going to happen.”

“I’m trying to be reasonable here, Loki.  This is far bigger than you, bigger than you can possibly understand, whatever you may think.  You will not be allowed to interfere.  Find yourself a new playmate.”

“No,” Gabe said, smiling and calm.  “Sam is mine.”

“Dude, you starting to feel like the only bone in the junkyard yet?” Dean muttered.  Sam glanced at him to find that he was aiming his gun at the new arrival’s head.  Just beyond him, Bobby and Ellen were doing the same.

“Just a little,” Sam muttered back.  He wasn’t sure where his gun had gone, but he still had a knife.  He just didn’t think it would do much good against this new being.

“Sam Winchester has a fate that’s been written since before you existed.  He isn’t yours.  Now leave before I have you wiped from existence.”

“Isn’t that what you’re planning anyway?  The grand finale, the Big A?” Gabe said.  “You people are planning the Apocalypse, and you think no one knows?  That no one cares, or that we’re too afraid to stand up and put a stop to things before it goes too far?  This isn’t your world, Zachariah.  You don’t have the right to decide when to end it.”

“Congratulations, you know my name.  Actually, you know a little more than I’m comfortable with you knowing.”  Zachariah snapped his fingers and three more figures appeared, each holding a shining silver blade. 

Gabe rolled his eyes.  “You always were too limited in your view, Zach.”  A similar blade appeared in his hands, and it seemed to alarm not only Zachariah, but the three new arrivals too.  Sam pegged them for the muscle, and it was never good when the muscle was nervous.

Zachariah backed up a step.  “Where did you get that?” he demanded.

“It’s mine, you twit.”

Zachariah squinted at Gabe for a few seconds.  Then his mouth sagged open unattractively.  “ _You!_ ” he spat.

“Me!” Gabe laughed.  The muscle all glanced at each other then looked to Zachariah.  Zachariah made a dismissive gesture, and the three vanished.  Sam shifted uneasily.  Whatever these beings were, it disturbed him that they didn’t want to get into a four against one fight against Gabe.  Gabe was powerful, yes, but _that_ powerful?  It was frightening, in a way.  Especially when he considered that they’d tried to kill him when they first met.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Zachariah informed him.  “Just what do you think you’re playing at by trying to claim Sam Winchester?  You _know_ what he’s destined for.”

“I’m not ‘trying’ to do anything.  I _have_ done.  He’s mine, of his own free will.”

“How can he be?  He doesn’t even know who you really are.  A choice made in ignorance isn’t really a choice at all,” Zachariah lectured.

“Pompous ass,” Sam muttered. 

Gabe shot him a quick grin.  “Oh, like you were going to present him with all the facts before having him choose what he would do?  Besides, I’ve never lied to him.  He knows that he doesn’t know everything about me, and he chose me anyway.”

“I doubt that,” Zachariah sniffed.

“It’s true,” Sam said.  He was beyond sick of being talked about like he was little more than a chess piece and stepped forward.  He walked over to stand beside Gabe.  “I have chosen to be with Gabe.  Whatever he is, whatever his true name is, I choose him.  You can go fuck yourself.”

“Charming.”  Zachariah gave him a thin smile.  “But naive.  Even foolish.  He is keeping you from what you were meant to be, Sam.  You know nothing about him.  You think he’s a Trickster?  He’s not.  Not even close.”

“I don’t care,” Sam said firmly.  “How many times do I have to say it?  Whatever, whoever he is, I choose him.”

Zachariah just smiled, condescending and smug.  “Even if I tell you that his true name is Gabriel?”

“Gabriel?”  Sam turned his back on Zachariah and met his lover’s eyes.  “Is that really your actual name?”

Gabe lifted his chin.  “Yeah, kid.  It is.”

Sam frowned as he processed that information.  There was one obvious, very famous Gabriel, but there was no way....  Gabe nodded, and behind him the shadow of wings suddenly flared out, immense and terrifyingly beautiful.  “Gabriel,” he breathed.  “You’re Gabriel.”  He glanced at Zachariah.  “Is he...?”

“He’s one, too.  Middle management only, though,” Gabe sneered. 

“You can’t seriously expect me to believe that you’re an archangel,” Sam protested.  “I mean, you snore!  What kind of archangel snores?”

“I do not!” Gabe squawked.  “I don’t even need to sleep, Sam, how could I snore?  You must have been dreaming.”

Sam glared at him.  “You might not need sleep, but you like it, and you do snore.  Like a friggin’ chainsaw.”

“Snoring, no snoring, it doesn’t matter.  I’m an archangel, Sam, can we please focus on that?”

“Yes, let’s focus on that, Sam,” Zachariah interrupted.  “We’re really very disappointed in him.  Just look at the way he’s lied to you all this time!  That’s not even including the way he ran away from Heaven and his duties there.”

Sam saw the faintest flinch in Gabe’s eyes at that and snapped.  “Y’know, I’m not even sure I believe the whole angel thing.  But what I _do_ believe is that you’re a complete douche.”

Zachariah scowled and turned his back, completely dismissing Sam.  “Your interference won’t be allowed.  We’ve all worked too long and too hard at this just to have you ruin it.  It’s time to come home, Gabriel.”

“Already there, thanks.  You’re welcome to try dragging me, if you like.  I don’t recommend it, but you can try.”

Zachariah huffed.  “We’ll just see what your brothers have to say about this!”

“Michael won’t do anything, and Raphael can kiss my ass.  We all know that none of you were authorized to do what you’ve done.  Father would have had me spread the word if He thought it was time.  You’re all acting without permission.  Now, I’m all for stretching wings and self discovery and all that, but not when it leads to the end of the world.  I’m having too much fun.  So you go right on back and tell everyone that the apocalypse is canceled due to lack of interest.  Sam Winchester is off limits.”  Gabe glanced at Sam, then past him at Dean.  “And since I really don’t want to be put on the couch, Dean is off limits as well.”

“You would do that?” Dean whispered.  Sam shrugged.  He’d _consider_ it, certainly, but considering the only couch that he could conceivably kick Gabe to was owned and possibly created by Gabe, he wasn’t sure how that would work.  “Dude, you realize that makes you the chick, right?”

Without looking, Sam reached out and punched his brother in the arm. 

“That isn’t your decision to make, Gabriel.”

“That’s too bad, because I’ve made it.  And I’m getting really, really bored with this conversation, Zach, so I suggest you piss off.”  Gabe snapped his fingers, and there was a split second where Sam was able to register the utter fury and shock on Zachariah’s face before he vanished.  “Okay, kids, get your stuff.  It’s time to go.”

“I’m fine with that, but what’s the hurry?” Sam asked.

“Because we’re going to be visited by some very cranky relatives of mine, and I am all about avoiding that mess.”  Gabe made shooing motions with his hands. 

“Oh, you mean more angels?” Dean drawled.

Sam grabbed his arm before he could really get going.  “Dean, let’s just get out of here.  It doesn’t matter what they really are, they’re bad enough news that Gabe doesn’t want to deal with them.  You remember Gabe, right?  The guy that kicked Yellow Eyes around the cemetery like a Nerf ball?  We’ll have the religious debate later.”  He gave Dean a push in the direction of the car and glanced to make sure Ellen and Bobby were heading out.  When he was sure that everyone was on the move, he turned back to his lover.  Gabe was watching him with an unreadable look on his face.  “Be careful, okay?  And don’t make me wait too long to see you.”  He hurried to catch up with the others when Gabe didn’t respond.

There was, predictably enough, a lot of yelling on the drive back to Bobby’s.  Sam believed the angel thing completely.  Dean didn’t.  Bobby and Ellen seemed to take it in turns to play Devil’s advocate for each of them.  Sam didn’t know from one moment to the next which of them was on his side. 

Dean got out of the car when they finally got back to Bobby’s and actually slammed the door.  “Bottom line, Sam – angels don’t exist,” he said flatly.  “Full stop, no ifs ands or buts about it.”

“You know what you sound like?” Sam fumed.  “A _civilian_.”  Dean’s jaw dropped.  “You sound exactly like the poor shmucks we’re always having to pull out of the line of fire because they’re convinced that ghosts and monsters aren’t real.  Just because you don’t believe in them doesn’t mean they aren’t.”

“Just because you _do_ doesn’t mean they are!”

“No, that’s true.  But I’d say there’s at least some evidence to support it!  I’ve read up on Tricksters, Dean.  They’re powerful, yes, but no where near as powerful as Gabe has proven himself to be.  I can’t think of anything that is.  Demons come close, but not even they can mess with time at will the way he can.  So yeah, I believe, because I’m someone who has faith and always has.  And because that belief is supported by enough evidence to make even _you_ wonder.”  They glared at each other across the roof of the car.

“Boys, this really isn’t getting us anywhere,” Ellen said finally.  “Angels or not, I didn’t like what I was hearing.  Whatever you want to call ‘em, it seems they’re working on a plan to end the world.  I’d say that’s a little more important than what label to put on them, wouldn’t you?”

“Let’s hear it for the lady!” Gabe applauded.  Sam relaxed, relieved that his lover was actually there.  He’d had the niggling fear that Gabe wouldn’t return.  “At least one of you has some sense.”  He turned serious eyes on Sam.  “We need to talk, cupcake.”

“No way, not a freakin’ chance,” Dean snapped.  “You talk to all of us, or you talk to none of us.  What the hell was that back there?  What are you really?”

“Sam’s already explained that to you, Dean,” Gabe said patiently.  “I am the archangel Gabriel and all that?  That was me telling my entire family to fuck off for the sake of your brother.”  Eyes glittering, he drew himself up.  It was easy, in that moment, to miss how short he actually was.  The air felt heavy and charged with his presence, and even Dean closed his mouth in the face of it.  “I don’t particularly give a shit if you believe in angels or God, but I’m not going to lie just to make you feel better.  You’ve had the truth, and now I’m going to take Sam and have what is probably an overdue conversation with him.  When it’s over, I’m going to come back, slap a few protections on all of you, and then I’ll be on my way.”

“Dean, it’s fine.  Just wait here, get some rest.  I’ll be back later,” Sam told him.  Without hesitating, he reached out to take Gabe’s hand.  Gabe didn’t even bother to snap his fingers before transporting them to his apartment.  Sam blinked at him.  “Can I see your wings?”

Gabe laughed, clearly surprised.  “That’s what you ask me?  You want to see my _wings_?”  Gabe ran his fingers through his hair and shook his head.  “Whoo, Sam, you really never fail to surprise.  But no, actually, you can’t see my wings.  You can’t see more than the shadow of my wings, because seeing any portion of my true form will melt your face.”

“Huh.”  Sam shoved his hands in his back pockets and rocked on his heels.  “In that case, I guess we could talk about the whole angel thing.  And the apocalypse thing.  I’m really concerned about the apocalypse thing,” he admitted.

“Understandable.  I’d rather not get into all of it.  Some of it you really don’t need to know.  Basically, Dad left and forgot to leave his forwarding address and Michael took over.  The End of Days has been written since the Creation, and you and your brother both had starring roles.  Michael decided to get the ball rolling, and most of the higher ups in Heaven have been working on it for longer than you’d think.  Hell wasn’t exactly working with them, but they were working towards the same thing anyway, so they were partners by default.  I...was going to let it happen,” Gabe said, sounding like a confession.  “You can’t imagine the fighting up there.  Makes what you and your dad used to get into look like a day at the beach.  It’s why I left – I couldn’t take it anymore.  And I just wanted it to be over.”

“So what changed your mind?”

Gabe looked at him like he was stupid.  “You, you idiot.  With your floppy hair and long legs and those ridiculous dimples and your even more ridiculous desire to do the right thing all by your little lonesome....”  He shook his head.  “You reminded me why humanity was Dad’s favorite.”

Sam shook his head slowly.  “Gabe - Gabriel,” he corrected himself.  “You can’t seriously....I’m no shining example of humanity,” he protested.  “I’m stubborn and I’ve got a lousy temper and I’ve let down every single person who’s important to me.  _Every one_.  I can’t – “

“Oh, shut up,” Gabe snapped.  “What, you want me to change my mind, tell the boys upstairs that the Big A is back on?”

“Of course not,” Sam snapped back.  “But you’re, y’know, it sounds like you’re hinting at something pretty significant on your part, feelings-wise, and I really don’t think I’m worth that.  You’re an _archangel_ and I’m just – a human that has demon blood in him.”

“So you don’t want me to love you, but knocking boots is just fine.  Is that right?”

Sam rubbed the back of his neck.  When put like that, it just sounded stupid.  Or rather, it sounded like something that Dean would say, afraid of feelings and being hurt as his brother was.  But he was.  Afraid, that is.  Afraid of the love of a being more powerful than he could really understand, second only to God Himself.  “I guess Zachariah was more right than I wanted to admit,” he confessed quietly.  “Knowing who you really are, _what_ you really are, it does make a difference.  Not in the way I feel about you,” he hastened to add.  “But...knowing what you are, I can’t help feeling...unworthy.  Like I should be praying to you, begging your forgiveness for my sins rather than thinking about committing all new ones _with_ you.”  He met Gabe’s eyes and held his hands out to the sides helplessly.  “You’re no different now than you were yesterday.  You still love sweets and pranks and licking chocolate sauce off my back, but now I guess I’m waiting for a good smiting.”

“You’re right, I’m not any different.  And you did give yourself to me, Sam.  Freely, without any coercion.  Do you want to take that back?”

“No,” Sam protested.  “But shit, Gabe, can’t a guy have time to process his lover being an angel of the Lord?  I’m human, and this has thrown me, and you’re not exactly helping, y’know.”

“Oh yeah?  Well, look at it from my point of view.  I’ve successfully hidden from the entire Host for over a millennia and I just outed myself for you.  I’m going to have my brothers hounding me to go back and pressuring me to nudge the end of the world along, in between the endless, endless fighting amongst themselves, and I did it for you.  Because I do happen to love you, you enormous moron, and I’d like to know that you’re not going to run for the hills now that you know who I am.  And you’re not exactly helping _me_ with _that_.”

“Of course I’m not!” Sam yelled.  “I’m freaked out, okay, yes.  Waiting for that smiting, but that’s the only thing that would make me leave you.  Aren’t I allowed to worry about what God is gonna think about me getting horizontal with one of His angels?  Huh?  One of our sitters when we were kids was a priest, I’ve got quite a few preconceptions about how angels – about how _you_ are supposed to act, and sucking me off on a Ferris Wheel never figured into that.”

“How about the Tilt-a-Whirl?” Gabe offered, suddenly relaxed and smiling again.  “You can get the car spinning and I can just lean over and unzip you, take you out right there while you get more and more dizzy....”

Sam blinked for a moment.  “What?  I don’t think that would work, I’d smoosh you into the side of the car.”

Gabe wiggled his fingers.  “Not if I didn’t want you to, you wouldn’t.”

Sam laughed, surprising himself, and just like that the doubt and fear were gone.  “Okay, well, we’ll keep that in mind.  Although I think I’d rather go to Mardi Gras while you’re wearing the redhead.”  He reached out and pulled Gabe close.  Face buried in silky hair, Sam breathed deep of the chocolate/mint scent of his lover and relaxed.  “I do love you.  That hasn’t changed and it won’t.”

“Okay then.  I’ll deal with the rest.  I might have to head to Heaven for a while, I’ve got a few ideas about really taking the wind out of Michael’s wings.  I mean, most of the Host probably doesn’t know that Father didn’t give the okay for the end of days, so if His Messenger speaks out against it, Michael is going to have his hands full maintaining order.”

“Um, isn’t Michael the one that cast Satan out?  Won’t he just try to do the same to you?” Sam asked hesitantly.

“He can’t,” Gabriel said, surprised.  “I’m an archangel, Sam, and I haven’t rebelled against Father.  He could kill or cast out an angel of a lower order, but he can’t truly harm me or Rafael without Father’s permission.  He’ll just try to make my life miserable.”

Sam sighed, feeling like he was sixteen again, with Dean trying to stick up for him without actually disobeying or angering John.  “Maybe you don’t have to,” he suggested.  “You’ve been here for so long already, and you said the apocalypse is already canceled, so why bother stirring the pot?”

“Because I’m just one angel defying my brother, who is in command of the Host of Heaven,” Gabe explained patiently.  “And my brother will do just about anything to get things back on track, since he’s been preparing to face Lucifer again since the Fall.  So we’d have both Heaven and Hell all doing everything they possibly could – and you can’t even imagine what they’re really capable of – to make it happen.  I need to do what I can to get Michael off our backs or we’ll be in for a world of hurt.”

“Okay then.  What do you need me to do?  How can we help?”

Gabe stepped back, eyebrow raised.  “You think you can stand against an angel, Sam?”

Sam lifted his chin.  “I’ll stand against anything that tries to hurt the people that I love.  I’ll stand against anything and anyone that’s trying to do what Michael and the other angels are.  You just watch me.”

“It’s a good thing you’re cute, ‘cause you’re also insane.  And I happen to like insane.”

“Oh yeah?  That’s good.  Because if you think I’m nuts now, wait until after I’ve tried explaining all this to Dean.”


End file.
